Fashion
Little dresses: fighting poverty one point at a time
MANKATO, Minn. The 120 handmade children’s shorts and dresses of all sizes and colors were carefully folded, sorted and ready to be picked up in boxes in the basement of Mary Warner one morning in February.
By the end of March, these dresses and shorts will reappear 8,000 kilometers away in the West African country of Sierra Leone.
“Since our inception in 2011, we have shipped nearly 14,000 dresses and shorts to 27 different countries,” said Warner, who runs the non-profit organization Little Dresses of New Ulm.
These countries are among the poorest in the world, from Haiti to Zambia and from Honduras to Liberia. In Sierra Leone, where 60% of the population earns about $ 1.25 a day, according to the United Nations, a handmade dress is a luxury that most cannot afford.
Warner first heard of the national Dresses for Africa organization from a Sleepy Eye woman who overheard a conversation about the nonprofit organization at a local thrift store in 2010 and was intrigued.
“One of the Sleepy Eye stitchers showed me how to make my first dress,” Warner told Mankato Free Press. “The first ones weren’t so good, but the more you earn, the better you get.”
She met Kathy Austinson, Director of Seniors Programs at Community and Seniors Together, an organization that provides social opportunities for seniors in New Ulm who put Warner in touch with volunteers who derive as much satisfaction from volunteering as the children who receive the outfits.
In 2011, Warner and a few other volunteers sent their first and only shipment to the Little Dresses for Africa warehouse in Michigan, but never knew where the dresses were going and who wore them.
“We decided to go do our own thing based on what they do,” said Warner.
First, she needed more fabric for the dresses, which came from thrift stores and garage sales. When she contacted fabric companies in New Jersey and California, they responded by sending her 1,200 pounds of residual fabric collectively.
“They came in the biggest boxes you have ever seen,” she said.
The next step was to contact voluntary organizations doing charity work in developing countries to see if they had room to bring dresses with them.
Charities such as Smile International and the World Riders Foundation have brought her dresses abroad, and Ann Carlson, a volunteer with the United Methodist Church of Minnesota, will bring the dresses to Sierra Leone as part of of an ongoing project to equip a school. The.
“Every expedition has a story,” said Warner. “Many of them are written down. We have been keeping an album since we started with stories about the expedition, what people are saying and the notes we get from people going.”
Warner has sewn 1800 dresses herself and works with 36 women, mainly in New Ulm but also in Mankato and Marshall, who sew dresses and shorts in recycled and donated materials. Warner’s sister Kate Laway of Burnsville manages a group of women in the Twin Cities area.
“He grew up and served so many women in this community,” said Austinson.
“This is what we want to do to support the aging in New Ulm. It gives them an approach, and their ministry of the heart is made much easier because of Mary’s organizational skills.”
To make it easier for volunteers, Warner makes sewing kits that contain everything you need to make a dress or shorts.
“Women who sew can take one, take it home and sew on their own machine,” said Warner.
A few years ago, volunteer Marilyn Streit, a member of the Holy Rosary Catholic Church in North Mankato, saw some of Warner’s dresses exhibited during a convention at the Roman Catholic Diocese of New Ulm. Knowing that Warner was looking for materials, she donated 70 meters of fabric belonging to her mother.
Streit and another church member, Barb Wegscheid, went to New Ulm to see Warner’s operation firsthand, and before long they were sewing dresses themselves.
“I think it’s wonderful to help, and there are so many needs out there,” said Wegscheid. “When I discovered that you could make these pretty little dresses, it feels good to know that they have been used.”
The two usually pick up around 35 dress kits at a time to bring back to Mankato. When Streit published on the need for organizational fabric on the church bulletin, more than half a dozen other women responded not only with donations, but with willingness to lend their time and talents for sewing dresses.
“I had a daughter who turned 50 over the summer,” said Streit. “It was probably 300 to 350 in total. When they are finished, three or four of us bring them back to Mary. He is such an inspiring person. She is so enthusiastic and the girls are always impressed by its configuration. Then we go out to eat and have a day. “
Warner said she never thought the project would take off as he did and has no plans to stop. She said she would continue to sew dresses for children around the world for as long as they could, with the help of volunteers who have become good friends.
“I have met hundreds of wonderful female stitchers. They are all talented and eager to help someone else have a better life,” said Warner. “It is essentially what we are. The photos we get from our travelers and the smiles on the faces of these little girls wearing our dresses are what motivates me to continue and to help others. It all comes from the heart. “
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