BY VIRGINIA PENIAS
Senior Lexy Lopez has created a Little Dresses for Africa organization at Cooper City High School to help young girls around the world who cannot afford clothes.
Every morning, students open up their closets to see plenty of clothes to wear, but most don’t realize that other people, like young girls in Africa have trouble finding a single outfit. This program strives to fix that problem.
The program started when mass media and film teacher Janessa Puig found out about Little Dresses for Africa, a nationwide non-profit Christian organization, which provides relief to the children of Africa, and emailed fellow teacher Linda Snider in regards to it. Snider, the fashion class teacher, shared it with her fashion students and the idea caught Lopez’s attention.
Little dresses for Africa is a sewing group where students meet and make dresses out of pillowcases. Pillowcases make dress-making easier for the most novice sewers. With different patterns and textures, the pillowcases make cute and fun sun dresses for these young girls, which is ideal for the hot dry weather of Africa.
With a simple pillowcase, women around the nation, like Lopez, strive to make a difference in young girl’s lives. Receiving over one million dresses and donations from the UK, Canada, Mexico, Australia and all 50 states across the USA, Little Dresses for Africa has not only helped young girls in Africa, but also in Honduras, Guatemala, The Philippines, Cambodia, Mexico, Haiti, as well as young children here in the US.
To promote Little Dresses for Africa here in CCHS, Lopez has gotten clubs like SGA, NHS, Fashion Club, DECA, and a few others to help her out and get more people to join the club. Her goal is to make 300 dresses this year.
“As of right now, the club is only targeted towards young girls but next year I hope to expand it and help provide for young boys too by passing the club onto somebody that I know will try just as hard as I am since I’m graduating this year,” Lopez said.
