Little dress, better world

“Together, we can make a difference … one little dress at a time.” Rachel O’Neill, head of Little Dresses for Africa, despair-defying firebrand

If you have a lovely pillowcase, a summer afternoon and minimal sewing skills, you have the right stuff to make a difference in one little girl’s life. That’s all it takes to make the kind of little dress that is helping young girls (and the adults they are desperately dependent upon) to see their own worth and beauty.

This delightful concept — so simple, yet so life-altering — is the faith work of Rachel O’Neill, a Michigan (U.S.) resident who links such dresses to areas of need in Africa and other parts of the world.

Curious about her work, I tracked her down by phone over the weekend. Her top-rated organization had just shipped a 40-foot container filled with not only dresses, but wheel chairs and all sorts of the other things that people simply need but often cannot get. LDFA is also involved in clean-water projects.

Girls in a craft group associated with our church absolutely loved making a handful of dresses to add to the next big shipment. Meeting someone else’s material need seemed to meet a spiritual need in them.

It’s true. The only thing little about these dresses is their size.

If you’d like to help individually or you have a group looking for a project, more information is at www.littledressesfor africa.org.