Chapter sends handmade dresses around the world
Dress a Girl Around the World, a program launched in 2009 under the nonprofit Hope 4 Women International, has delivered handmade dresses to girls across four continents through chapters like the one in Sedona, reaching communities from Uganda and Malawi to Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala and Antigua, American Indian reservations in Arizona, Hawaii and as far as India and Ecuador.
“I was looking for a volunteer opportunity, and this one kind of fit the bill, because I can work at home on my time, and I just love the concept of giving to these girls who don’t have new things,” said Lynn Salsbury, a retired clinical psychologist and club member for three years. “It could be the first time in their life they have a new dress.”
Kathy Roth took over last year as the Sedona chapter’s local coordinator, succeeding Lin Ennis.
“I learned to sew when I was a kid and picked it up again when I retired,” Roth said. “I met Lin in about 2019, and she was the coordinator for Sedona at the time, and she got me going on it. When she moved, I took over. … I love to sew, and I love to be contributing to the good of people everywhere, so it’s a perfect fit.”
No prior sewing experience is required to join, and there is no membership fee Roth said. Those who prefer not to sew can help by cutting donated cotton fabric into kits, sorting completed dresses or donating materials.
“At home, we do the actual sewing of the dresses,” Salsbury said. “Here we put together. We call them kits, so it comes with fabric for the dress and then fabric for the sleeves and the pockets. And the pockets are important because they like to store any personal belongings that they have in there.”
At monthly meetings, members bring completed dresses for quality control checks, where seams are inspected, dresses are measured and sorted by size, then bundled and stored until needed.
“We’ll help them get started,” Roth said. “The patterns are very simple. And actually, if people don’t want to sew, they can always help cut or sort or donate fabric. If they’re traveling to a third-world country or some place that might benefit from dresses and they’re willing to take some along, that’s helpful too.”
Roth and her husband Paul, whom she met in college, traveled to Quito, Ecuador, in 2023, where they personally delivered dresses to children.
Member Berry Larson, who commutes an hour and 45 minutes from Winslow each meeting since joining in September, is a former warden at a state prison and past president of the Winslow Chamber of Commerce. She said she sought out the Sedona chapter since Winslow doesn’t have the group.
“I really feel it’s important that little girls around the world, sometime in their life, get a brand new dress,” Larson said. “These people are so poor, at a poverty level that we cannot imagine.”
Larson’s sister, Lori McMacken, founder of Butterfly Effect Global, and has dug about 150 water wells and supports leprosy colonies in India. She delivered 102 dresses to communities there, and another 101 dress to a Ugandan refugee camp in February.
Outside of meeting the girls’ material needs, Larson said the dresses can have an additional purpose.
“Child trafficking is a really big issue in these areas, and a dress with a label on it means that somebody, somewhere, is paying attention to this child,” Larson said. “This child is important to some organization, and hopefully it could reduce child trafficking.”
“Come check us out,” Roth said. “We meet on the second Friday of each month at the Sedona Methodist Church, 110 Indian Cliffs Road, 9:30 to 11:30 a.m. Just drop in, or if you can’t make that time, just give me a call or text, and I’ll try to arrange a time when we can meet and sort some things out, answer questions, provide kits or whatever.”
For more information about Dress a Girl you can contact Roth at (928) 274-1120 or at rivervu@hotmail.com or DAGsedona@gmail.com.