Can Old Dresses Help a Kenyan Dressmaker ?

Can Old Dresses Help a Kenyan Dressmaker ?

 My Thursday column tells the story of Jane Ngoiri, a woman in Nairobi who has managed to transform her life – and her children’s – with some outside help. Originally,Celebrity Stylist George Kotsiopoulos Highlights Fall's Hottest Looks Featuring Fashion's Most Unexpected Star Fabric , I thought I would write this column about microfinance, but as I followed Jane it became increasingly obvious that while her access to credit helped her start a business, the biggest help was the psychological push to save and start thinking about the future.

I’m sure some readers will want to help Jane and her family, by digging out any old fancy dresses you may have in your basement. Her specialty is buying used wedding dresses or bridesmaid dresses on the second-hand markets of Nairobi (typically donated in the U.S. and then send in bulk containers to Africa), and then cutting them up and turning them into two or three children’s dresses. Finding this raw material is tough for her, and hours of prodding the used clothing markets in Nairobi may turn up only one dress. So when I mentioned to her that readers might have some dresses they’d be happy to send her, you should have seen her face light up.

The television documentary company that I’m working with (we’re filming a PBS documentary of “Half the Sky,” the book about empowering women that I wrote with my wife, Sheryl WuDunn) has agreed to accept parcels at its New York office. The company, Show of Force, will then trans-ship the dresses to Nairobi, paying the shipping costs and customs duties (which can be considerable), and get them into Jane’s hands. I hope to be able to run a follow-up blog item down the line with photos of Jane and whatever you send her.