Here is an amazing story:

We were approached earlier this year by Julie Everson, a member of the Stockton on Tees branch of Soroptimists International, and asked if we could take a collection of girls’ dresses over to Meserani, and give them away to some of the more needy girls that we came across. The story behind it is extremely interesting, and Julie has explained the background below:

I was inspired to get sewing after reading an article about an American charity, Dress a Girl Around the World, - their strapline is 'Imagine a world where every little girl owns a new dress'. It aims to provide girls from poorer countries with good quality dresses and there a wider aspiration that it will help keep them safer from predators if they appear to be well cared for. I got in touch with the UK co-ordinator, downloaded very simple instuctions and got sewing. Its very addictive and great fun - I made about 20 dresses. My daughter, who is a primary school teacher, helped and even got her pupils involved in decorating the dresses. Fellow members of Stockton Soroptimists brought me material and ribbon to keep me going.You need very basic skills to get started and can even make a dress from a pillowcase. The UK co-ordinators are always looking for ways to distribute the dresses so I approached Peter and Diane to help make sure the dresses found their way to good homes in the Mesarani district.There is more info on http://sewscrumptious.blogspot.co.uk/p/pillowcase-dress-info.html or on Facebook.

We took the dresses to Meserani with the group of adults that spent two weeks there in August, and some of them took on the task of ‘dressing the girls’. The images below show what it meant to the girls that were ‘dressed’, and we owe a massive thank you to Julie for the efforts and time that she put in to make this happen. We are already looking forward to handing out the remaining dresses when we visit Meserani in the New Year.