“Dress A Girl Around The World” program makes dresses in church basement
Above, Sue Cavness, founder of Dress A Girl Southwest Missouri, holds one of the dresses made at Emmanuel Baptist Church in Cassville. Photo by Lacey Reeves
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Above, left to right, Hazel Gripka, Johnnie Edie and Pat Allison put together kits to be sewn at Emmanuel Baptist Church in Cassville. Photo by Lacey Reeves
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June 23
Lacey Reeves
It isn’t uncommon for Barry County residents to spend some of their time in warmer places in the winter. Sue Cavness and her husband are one of those couples who like to avoid harsh Missouri winters by traveling to an RV park in Texas each year. Little did Sue know that her time in Texas would allow her to bring a ministry over to Missouri.
While at the RV park, Cavness was invited to a meeting of the people who were living there. A group had been formed that worked together to create new dresses for little girls in other countries, as a part of the “Dress a Girl Around the World” program.
Sue believes that it was a God thing for her to have attended the meeting at all, as she didn’t even know how to sew. Sue continued to go to the meetings and found ways to help the group in other ways and fell in love with the ministry.
When Sue returned to Missouri in the spring, she asked her church family at Emmanuel Baptist to donate hand-me-down men’s shirts to take back with her to Texas for her next visit. The church donated a multitude of shirts to help, inspiring Sue to begin her own Barry County branch of the ministry.
Sue has a team of volunteers to help with the project and workdays. Shirts are donated and then cut apart. Almost every part of the shirt is usable, only the collar and yoke are discarded. Next, they are made into kits cut into patterns including pockets, straps, and ruffles. A group of volunteers chooses what patterns would look best for the dresses and makes a kit of all the pieces to be sewn. Some of the volunteers have the ability to sew and take some of the kits home to finish in their spare time. Sue has a team of over 40 seamstresses that work on the dresses outside of their workdays. Each piece of clothing has a Dress A Girl patch sewn on and has been known to stop sex trafficking among the children. Predators will not go after the children with the patch because they know they are protected. Sue believes the patches to be a shield of God over the children.
After their completion, dresses are hand delivered by missionaries to other countries like Honduras, Bolivia, and Kenya as well as others. The Dress A Girl team from Barry County have made a total of 871 dresses as well as 259 pairs of boy’s shorts for these children over the course of two years. Volunteers participate in workdays to help make the clothing from April to October meeting almost every two weeks in the Emmanuel Baptist Church basement.
To help Dress A Girl, one can donate clothing or fabric that does not have holiday print and isn’t white, see-through, or pastel colored. Donations should be 100% or mostly cotton. The group encourages anyone interested to come help work on the dresses or even just to visit and see what the group is all about. No experience is needed to participate and there is a job for everyone. They also post updates to their Facebook page, “Dress A Girl Southwest Missouri”.
Lacey Reeves
It isn’t uncommon for Barry County residents to spend some of their time in warmer places in the winter. Sue Cavness and her husband are one of those couples who like to avoid harsh Missouri winters by traveling to an RV park in Texas each year. Little did Sue know that her time in Texas would allow her to bring a ministry over to Missouri.
While at the RV park, Cavness was invited to a meeting of the people who were living there. A group had been formed that worked together to create new dresses for little girls in other countries, as a part of the “Dress a Girl Around the World” program.
Sue believes that it was a God thing for her to have attended the meeting at all, as she didn’t even know how to sew. Sue continued to go to the meetings and found ways to help the group in other ways and fell in love with the ministry.
When Sue returned to Missouri in the spring, she asked her church family at Emmanuel Baptist to donate hand-me-down men’s shirts to take back with her to Texas for her next visit. The church donated a multitude of shirts to help, inspiring Sue to begin her own Barry County branch of the ministry.
Sue has a team of volunteers to help with the project and workdays. Shirts are donated and then cut apart. Almost every part of the shirt is usable, only the collar and yoke are discarded. Next, they are made into kits cut into patterns including pockets, straps, and ruffles. A group of volunteers chooses what patterns would look best for the dresses and makes a kit of all the pieces to be sewn. Some of the volunteers have the ability to sew and take some of the kits home to finish in their spare time. Sue has a team of over 40 seamstresses that work on the dresses outside of their workdays. Each piece of clothing has a Dress A Girl patch sewn on and has been known to stop sex trafficking among the children. Predators will not go after the children with the patch because they know they are protected. Sue believes the patches to be a shield of God over the children.
After their completion, dresses are hand delivered by missionaries to other countries like Honduras, Bolivia, and Kenya as well as others. The Dress A Girl team from Barry County have made a total of 871 dresses as well as 259 pairs of boy’s shorts for these children over the course of two years. Volunteers participate in workdays to help make the clothing from April to October meeting almost every two weeks in the Emmanuel Baptist Church basement.
To help Dress A Girl, one can donate clothing or fabric that does not have holiday print and isn’t white, see-through, or pastel colored. Donations should be 100% or mostly cotton. The group encourages anyone interested to come help work on the dresses or even just to visit and see what the group is all about. No experience is needed to participate and there is a job for everyone. They also post updates to their Facebook page, “Dress A Girl Southwest Missouri”.
