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NBC News producer
Rachel O’Neill is at home in Malawi. Her real home is in Trenton, Mich., not far from Detroit. But when she arrives in Lilongwe, Malawi’s capital, she is welcomed like a native.
On her most recent trip to the country last month, O'Neill was greeted at the airport by a handful of locals, people she has known and worked with for almost five years. Her visits are never routine, but this trip was special.
Anthony Galloway/NBC News
O'Neill was returning to Malawi on the five-year anniversary of her first trip to the country. It was Thanksgiving week in 2006 when she first made a commitment to sew and hand out dresses to a few thousand girls – five years ago, almost to the day, when she promised to do something small to bring smiles to the faces of girls who she knew held so much promise. O'Neill didn’t know it at the time, but her simple idea to help a few thousand girls would end up touching the lives of hundreds of thousands of women around the world.
How to help: Little Dresses for Africa
Correspondent Chris Jansing and I had the opportunity to profile O'Neill over the past 14 months, reporting her story for NBC Nightly News. Each time we meet with her, we are impressed to learn about the astounding response she continues to receive from viewers. Since our first story aired in December 2010, O'Neill has received more than 400,000 dresses from all 50 states. The dresses arrive on her home doorstep and she, along with a dedicated army of volunteers, makes sure they get to needy girls throughout Africa.
The day before Thanksgiving, Jansing and I traveled to meet O'Neill in the village of Thobola, about 100 miles from Lilongwe, to witness firsthand what we had seen in so many photos and videos. There’s no easy way to get there. Eighteen hours in flight and three connections to the capital city, then a two-and-a-half hour drive south to the countryside, picking up fuel when you can, because Malawi suffers from a fuel shortage. But when you get to the end of the dirt road that leads to the village, you know instantly why O'Neill makes the trip.
Thobola is a simple town perched on a hill overlooking a green valley. Most people live in small, thatched-roof huts, pump their water from a well and only have basic nourishment. Still, despite their lack of traditional western resources, the kids’ smiles are radiant and their singing is contagious. They incorporate all of our names into a song: Rachel, Chris, Anthony, and also the names of O'Neill’s family and friends, Dave Taylor, Kandyce Muniz, Jerry and Mark Adams, who have come with her to help distribute the dresses.
Anthony Galloway/NBC News
It is a long, hot day in the unrelenting sunshine, but the girls are patient. It’s striking when O'Neill tells us the dresses may be the only new things these girls have ever been given. The larger message only sinks in later. In a place like Thobola, a brand-new, handmade dress is not just a piece of clothing. It’s a symbol of hope and a gesture of friendship from women 8,000 miles away. It’s one small thing a girl can hold on to as the sun sets and Rachel O’Neill prepares to make the long journey back to Michigan, knowing her little idea brought happiness to thousands of little girls today.
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Beautiful story.
........and did you see the smile in that photo?that's priceless.
I love that people travel the world to help. This is sure a touching story.
Now.... lets get involved in feeding and clothing our own backyard. Hungry kids needing clothes and food right here in the good ole USA too!
Another super simple dress is a t-shirt-or any kind of shirt- with a length of fabric with a gathering thread sewn on as a skirt.
Lovely idea and great that people are helping out! But wouldn't it also be a good idea to work on getting birth control and education about how to prevent pregnancy to these women? I can't understand why there isn't more of an effort by humanitarian agencies to attempt to prevent more children from being born into a life of grueling poverty with little chance of escape.
Why don't you form a charity to do just that rather than complain?
Because some people think that if you can't have a Western standard of living, it's not worth being born. How arrogant. Thatched roofs, well water and basic nutrition is how all our ancestors lived. Who says the people of Malawi don't want children?
There's always got to be one isn't there....
The lady doing this is not a Humanitarian agency, she is just a person that thought her efforts alone could bring a change to the lives of girls in another country. Once the story broke about her, others wanted to help. All too many people complain the "somebody" should do something but that "somebody" never includes the person complaining. She choose to be that somebody. She is just a kind, caring women with a vision of little girls being proud of their new dress.
Being poor is not a crime
The best form of birth control is education for women. When women can read, write and think for themselves because they have been allowed to see the world differently through books, then they can want something different than what they have seen in their world so far. How do you think that we got to have a say in the number of kids we would have in this part of the world?
The women who made the dresses are wonderfully kind I salute them,, and I was so moved by this sweet story. Such beautiful children.
It is a very nice story and I am glad that there are people able to take on these projects. It sounds very simplistic I know, but if we could focus on our sameness instead of our differences, the world would be a more loving place. Every ones tears are salty.......
With that said, I wish we would take one year and focus all of our charitable giving to here , the US. Maybe just maybe we could have every American child in a warm bed with a full belly.
Peace to All
Happy Festivus
I read about this group several months ago and have made a few batches of "little dresses." great feeling to contribute to kids who have so little.
I do think it's wonderful, and not to take anything away from what they're doing, but I hope they start something up to make clothes for the girls' brothers too.
I was just thinking that myself - what about the little boys?
I am not saying the boys do not suffer through grueling poverty as well but culturally the girls are considered less important. They are at the end of everyone's list so while the boys need clothes and help the girls' need is so much greater. Also as someone who sews - the dresses are so much easier to make and that probably has something to do with it as well.
I should add also that they do also take shorts for the boys it just isn't the main focus due to cultural conditions.
Can you imagine how the world would be much better if every "Well" off person had the determination and drive that this woman has for the under privigled! She is a very special person...She isn't in the news buying "Priceless Diamonds" or purchasing a million dollar pent houses...She is giving back to humanity...May God Bless her...
"Give a man a fish, he'll eat for a day. Teach a man to fish, he'll eat forever." As someone who has worked in international development off and on for 12 years in the Americas and now Africa, I commend theefforts of these seamstresses and donors. Their hearts are in the right place. However, I do encourage them to also think of the bigger picture. I've seen endless examples where donors gave everything from toothbrushes to water pumps to churches to $26million sewage systems as gifts to impoverished communities. Once those things break, the recipients are back to where they started but now with an expectation that things will be just given to them. Perhaps worse, they expect foreigners to provide leadership to solve their problems. So I encourage everyone to support education as the best way to help people in poverty (except in emergencies when people need things just to survive). To those kind people who made dresses, I encourage you to also communicate with people and agencies working there, read up on what the girls' lives are like, and learn about what their futures are likely to be.
This is all sweet and good, as it should be. How could it not be? Little girls, dresses, poor African children, the good will of many a woman and her sewing machine, an easy "feel good" project that requires little skill and very little investment---
Did you notice what the others in the village are wearing? They are wearing a combination of traditional cotton cloth and cast off polo shirts from the Goodwill. It looks like the women are wearing wrap skirts.
I agree with one poster who pointed out that just because these people are not living a modern Western life, it does not follow that the life they do have is in need of correction. Obviously, these people have lived like this for a very, very long time. Just what did the little girls wear back then? What did the adults wear back then? Wrapped clothing has probably been worn for a very long time. Old world clothing is typically of the whole cloth variety and worn wrapped and tied. When a length of cloth was had, it was unlikely that any of it would be cut away to make darts, sleeves, and collars.
The little dresses are this same type of clothing, whole cloth. But, the cotton prints that the others are wearing are much prettier than are most pillowcases.
It is a sweet idea, but, I am weary of anything done by christians in a place such as this. They have an agenda. First, there are the little dresses, then, there are the bogus religious notions that they dump on a people who are already inclined to magical thinking.
God Bless them
As a former Peace Corps Volunteer in Malawi, I applaud Rachel O'Neill and Little Dresses for Africa for their commitment to alleviating human suffering. It takes a lot of grace and dedication to travel to remote corners of Africa and try to help people in need. It's much easier to stay in Michigan and change the television station whenever unpleasant images of poor countries flash across the screen. That said, O'Neill and her organization could be much more effective. It's simple microeconomics: O'Neill makes her dresses in America with American materials (pillowcases?) and American labor. She then distributes them for free in Malawi, undermining local businesses that produce/import/sell clothing. Instead, she could collect money in the U.S., transfer it to a Malawian bank account with the click of a button, hire Malawian tailors (every village has several) to sew school uniform dresses using locally available materials, distribute the dresses to girls whose families want to send their daughters to school (primary school is free in Malawi) but don't have the money to purchase school supplies like dresses, and hire local Malawians to track the girls who receive dresses to measure the effectiveness of the program. If you want to help Malawi, do business in Malawi, don’t sabotage it. As the old saying goes, "God is in the details." If you are "helping" people in the name of God, please pay attention to the details. If you are interested in the details, read From Microsoft to Malawi: Learning on the Front Lines as a Peace Corps Volunteer (Hamilton Books 2011) (www.FromMicrosoftToMalawi.com).
this goes hand in hand with the comment about teaching a man how to fish vs. just giving him fish. i once taught a young woman from oaxaca, mexico, how to sew because she was pregnant and didn't have $ for maternity clothes. she loved it. when she went back home, she started a small business and taught others how to sew as well. she bought the sewing machine i taught her on in payments for a very good price. i would challenge the commentor about the 'little skill' to sew a straight line, egads. sewing for family and 'extended family' is a work of love. i am sure those little girls who are 'already inclined to magical thinking' can feel the love and it feels wonderful. doing business in malawi would be the logical next step, now that the demand has been created. best, anna martina
p.s. my sister and her friend, who are pediatric nurses at good samaritan hospital in mesa, arizona, sew small christmas quilts for every child who is unlucky enough to be in the peds unit at christmas time. they also sew small quilts for something called 'project linus' which stocks quilts for emergency situations and sent quilts to japan for the tsunami victims when they were requested. a group of sewing ladies in one of the trailer parks in the southern valley gets together to put these quilts together. these are works of love and caring, certainly not to be belittled. best, anna martina
anna, of course the quilts are a work of love. Putting together a quilt is somewhat more involved than running a pocket on a pillowcase.
Just because it is a work of love does not mean that it requires skill or investment. It is an easy and cheap thing to create a "little dress". People love do this kind of stuff! I even thought about doing it when I heard about it some times ago.
I have done things for project LInus. These projects are easy and just require time and a small investment in materials.
A more valuable thing to promote would be for them to produce and to sell little dresses to US for OUR children, using the African prints, so that THEY could pocket the profits. But, we have so much in America that our children don't need something so simple.
true, however, i would love to buy several wrap skirts made in malawi from African prints. and thank Providence that our children in America don't need something so simple. even i, living a wee bit above poverty level on social security disability, have so much in America! THEY would not need that much money to greatly improve their very simple lives. when i think that my own mother used to carry water from the river in jecori, sonora, mexico, in two clay pots slung across a wooden yoke on her shoulders! but my grandfather, the mayor of the teeny, tiny village and then a judge during the cristero wars, raised cattle and had a farm so there was always plenty to eat! he was of french and german descent. my grandmother was the spanish jew in her line who went back to russian jews. and who knows if i am part olmec, the african-looking nation of ancient mexico from before the continent split and became the americas and africa? or part moor, like shakepeare's 'othello' from the moors in spain? those little girls would probably love to read stories about the rest of the world and connect the dots. today's world is the smallest that it has ever been! blessings, anna martina
You have had the same 3 stories on this part of your site for weeks. Come on, get out there and do some real reporting. We would like to see good stories as much as the violent crap you put out there!come on MSN