“Little Dresses for Africa”/DDA Costume Shop Initiative
March 4, 2016
Simple little dresses are sewn by volunteers all over the world and distributed personally by teams led by Little Dresses for Africa, sent with mission groups, and mailed directly. As relationships are formed, needs are met by focusing on 3 areas: Our first focus is to provide a well to a community. Clean water serves a community with an average of 3000 people and saves lives immediately by increasing sanitation and providing clean drinking water. It also decreases the amount of time children are required to spend in going great distances to carry water for daily needs and the temptation to draw water from contaminated streams because they are closer. With the convenience of a nearby well, disease and sickness drops dramatically. Our second focus is primary education. There is no doubt that education can change the future for children. We focus on primary education because in our travels we noted that the very small orphans and child-headed families have a very difficult time in completing primary school if it is too far away. The distance puts them in jeopardy due to safety issues along with it just being too difficult on small ones. Students may not proceed to secondary school without a certificate of completion from the primary school. Unfortunately, by the time older children realize the importance of education they are much larger than the primary students and embarrassed to attend. A local school in the village will ease that burden. Our third focus is community. For generations community has sustained the African people. We find that providing a very modest place for the community to meet provides not only protection from the sun and also a place to meet during the rains, but can also serve as a feeding center, a place of worship and a place to host a mobile clinic. Community is much more than friendship. It is a way to sustain life by the sharing of information, resources and encouragement.