Dress A Girl Around the World

By day Gigi Sun is a senior business systems analyst in Sydney, Australia. When her 7.5 hour workday ends, instead of relaxing at home, she starts crafting for global nonprofit organization Dress a Girl Around the World on a volunteer basis. "The best way I can give back something to the world that has been so kind and generous to me is through my love for crafting, something that I've always enjoyed doing," Gigi says. "It's extremely fulfilling and rewarding."

To date, Dress a Girl has provided more than 164,000 dresses for girls in 65 countries around the world. The organization is part of Hope 4 Women International, and people from across the United States, Canada, Hong Kong, Australia, the UK, Sweden, the Philippines, Uganda, and more gather for a day or an evening of sewing dresses out of pillowcases and fabric in living rooms, basements, back yards, dining rooms, schools, churches, and civic centers. Dress A Girl produces dresses to tell girls around the world they are precious to God, and Gigi's goal is to personally provide 50 new dresses in 6 months' time. "I love crafting and creating things, and life has been quite easy for me and my five sisters and three brothers," Gigi says. "Making dresses for disadvantaged children makes this world a better place to live in."

Gigi has been a crafter for as long as she can remember. She began by making homemade cards, donating a dollar from each sale to a breast cancer research foundation in Australia. She stumbled across Dress a Girl while doing research for a specific fabric for a quilt she was making, and hopes to help spread the Dress a Girl campaign to more locations around the world. "My greatest wish for the future is to be able to collect as many fabrics, pillowcases, and sewing machines as possible to make dresses for little girls in poverty-stricken places all around the world."

See Gigi and five other womens' stories from around the globe featured in the "Women of the World" section of the TCW May/June digital magazine at this link.

Read more articles that highlight writing by Christian women at ChristianityToday.com/Women