Little Dresses for Africa

I was on Twitter on Sunday afternoon and I saw a tweet about a swap-bot.com swap involving 'Little Dresses for Africa.' Intrigued by the title, I clicked through and followed the link to find a wonderful website with pictures of beautiful African children wearing these adorable dresses. Each one is hand made with love and attention, and those little girls look so happy to be wearing new dresses that were made just for them.

So, I joined the swap and immediately went on an excursion to see if I had anything suitable in my fabric stash to whip up some little dresses. I did not really have enough pretty fabric, so I took a quick trip to Hancock fabrics, which is down the road from me in the Penn/Branch Shopping Center. They were having a sale, so I was able to get enough adorable cotton print fabrics to make 12 dresses for $34. Well, almost because that price does not include the thread and the elastic, but when I total it up, I think the cost for each dress will be about $3.50 each. Not bad.

My girls were thrilled and they wanted to help. We measured and cut the dresses on Sunday, and then yesterday, since Jordan had the day off from school, she and I made three dresses so that I could work the kinks out of the process. The next nine will be made in assembly-line fashion. It will be a fun, creative project.

As I was working on the first three samples, I thought how nice it would be to also send them to Haiti. I learned on Saturday from an interview I heard on XMradio between Deepak Chopra and Wyclef Jean, that 61% of the population of Haiti is under the age of 21. That's a lot of children, and the girls will need dresses. Leila quickly noticed that we should also be making boy clothes as well, on our next trip we'll get suitable fabric for britches for boys.

We had been feeling like we wanted to have more of an impact on helping the people of Haiti and showing them our love other than just sending money. Now, we have a way to send our love in a tangible way to the little children in Malawi, Kenya, Ethiopia, Sierra Leone and soon Haiti, that we love them, we want to see them smile and we want them to have hope and a future.

Here's a picture of Jordan modeling one of the dresses that for a much smaller girl:



So, if you're a member of swap-bot, join the 'Little Dresses for Africa' swap with me. If you are not a member, visit the Little Dresses for Africa website and contribute a few dresses or send in your donation to support this amazing organization.