Local parish makes dozens of dresses, a gift to little girls in Haiti

 Bake sales, raffle tickets and car washes have become synonymous with church groups raising funds for various projects to help those in need. The Council of Catholic Women from St. Paul the Apostle Church in Lighthouse Point, Fla., decided to take a different approach, and chose to make brightly colored dresses for little girls. They made their needs known, picked up a needle and thread and got to sewing.

“We wanted this to be a parish function, not just a women’s club function,” said Cathie Desjean, President of the Council of Catholic Women at St. Paul the Apostle Church. “We asked our parish to help, and they did. They donated all the pillowcases we needed and we used them for making the dresses.” 

Using a basic dress pattern and whole lot of creativity, a group of women volunteers turned new and used pillowcases that had been washed and pressed into adorable little sundresses with little bloomers to match.  After six months of sewing, a total of 184 dresses were then donated to Food For The Poor and will be distributed to little girls in Titayen, Haiti.

Titayen, located just north of Port-au-Prince, is where hundreds left homeless by the 2010 earthquake have pitched their tents. Food For The Poor is in the process of building a village in Titayen, which will consist of two-room concrete houses, a water filtration unit that will benefit the entire community, and a school building with the capacity to accommodate 300 students. The school will include administrative and meeting rooms, a kitchen and a 10-unit sanitation block.

“In a place where the need is so great, it’s easy to forget that it is often the small acts of kindness that make the biggest impact,” said Angel Aloma, Executive Director of Food For The Poor.  “We are very grateful to receive these little dresses because this gift means more than covering for these little girls –
it means they are not forgotten.”

“Each and every stitch made in these little dresses was made with love,” said DeeDee Coulombe, Vice President of the Council of Catholic Women at St. Paul the Apostle Church. “And we’re so happy that they are going to go to children who can really use them,”

Food For The Poor, named by The Chronicle of Philanthropy as the largest international relief and development organization in the nation, does much more than feed millions of the hungry poor in 17 countries of the Caribbean and Latin America. This interdenominational Christian ministry provides emergency relief assistance, clean water, medicines, educational materials, homes, support for orphans and the aged, skills training and micro-enterprise development assistance, with more than 96 percent of all donations going directly to programs that help the poor.

To learn more, please visit www.foodforthepoor.org.

Contact:
Wanda Wright
Food For The Poor
Public Relations
954-427-2222 x 6079
wandaw@foodforthepoor.com