Sewing for Service - Dress a Girl Around the World

As I've mentioned before I'm a Girl Guide.  A large part of being a guide is serving others.  At a camp for Olave Members (18-30 year olds) our service component for the weekend was Operation Dress A Girl. (International page here) But before I get too into what we did, let me tell you a little about who we did it for and why.

Operation Dress a Girl is a wonderful project which aims to give every girl in the world a dress.  The below is taken from the Dress a Girl Australia website.

"Dress a Girl Around the World" is about taking care of the world's future women and
envisioning a world " where every little Girl owned at least one dress because every little
girl deserves one".  It is a global campaign of the Hope-4-Women International which is
a US-based global organization that has been carrying hope around the world for more
than 37 years.  

 

As Girl Guides, we are the largest female youth movement in the world with over ten million members.  We work hard to promote gender equality and empower girls and women, teaching them that they can be whoever and whatever they want.  As we all know some people need a hand up.  Can you imagine if you had never owned a dress?  Or if they one you did was so worn through it was basically not worth wearing anymore? Giving girls a dress can give them confidence and courage that they never had before.  It can keep them in school which returns the benefits ten fold.  These are just a few of the reasons Operation Dress a Girl was chosen

 

We set a goal of making 50 dresses over the weekend.  As many people there had not sewn before I'm very pleased with how we went.  All 50 were cut, hemmed and had elastic threaded.  We had 10 completed by the end of the weekend with bias binding added as straps.  I bought a few home and set about finishing them and I thought I would share them today.

 

 

 

Operation Dress a Girl provided the pattern of a simple pillowcase dress is sizes from baby-7.  They were quite simple to construct and brilliant for using up those bits of 'why did I buy this?' fabric and bits from the clearance table.

 

 

 

 

They ask that the fabrics not be see-through.  Drills are perfect but we used anything thicker than Quilting Cotton.  As I saw it Lawn and Voiles were out of the running for this project.

  



 

So if you have some fabric you can spare and a little bit of free time please consider sewing a few dresses for Operation Dress a Girl.  It's a very worthwhile cause.

 

Have you ever sewn for a charity organisation or service project?