Update: Little Dresses for Africa

For those who haven’t heard of Little Dresses for Africa, it is a Christian organization which distributes simple dresses to Africa, which are sown by Americans (in Bible Studies or Girls Scout Troops), using the linen from spare pillowcases. To date, they have received and given over a half million dresses in over 31 African countries! And since many women involved in this effort live near Joye’s hometown, we were asked to bring some dresses to Kongodugu.

We were excited to give the dresses to the girls in our village, but we were also apprehensive about reinforcing the “hand-out” mentality that haunts many Peace Corps Volunteers. So, we had to think creatively. How can we give these dresses out in a way that not only demonstrates the love in which they were sewn, but also encourages sustainable development? We found the answer in Joye’s work as an education volunteer.

Girls have it rough in the Malian education system. The boy to girl ratio is 1:1 in the 1st grade, mainly to what we attribute as “the daycare effect” (what good is a six-year-old out in the fields?), but by the 5th grade the ratio is 6:1! Why? Because as the girls become old enough to become useful, their parents yank ‘em out of class and strap on the apron (this is a metaphor, of course, Malians don’t cook with aprons). The girls themselves also get discouraged because they are dismissed by their teachers and are often teased by their not-in-school peers.

So, after discussing the matter with the village school board, we decided to give a dress to every girl that enrolled in the primary school this year, 1st through 6th grades. It made the girls proud of their education thus far and demonstrated the importance of educating girls to our village. Each girl was especially excited since they received a new dress only a few days before the biggest Malian holiday. While many families won’t be able to afford new clothes this year due to the drought, these girls will proudly be wearing their beautiful dresses.

  

 

Most of the girls didn’t react when we handed them the dress; showing emotion during gift-giving is not really Malian custom. But we saw their excitement in other ways: the way they all wore their dresses the next day, the way they flaunted their dresses while at market, and the way they all ran home thrilled to show their parents. So on behalf of the schoolgirls of Kongodugu to the tailors behind Little Dresses for Africa : “I ni ce! I ni baraji!” which means "Thank you and bless you.”

Thanks for reading!

-James & Joye