Church donates 100-plus dresses | News, Sports, Jobs - Nashua Telegraph

Telegraph photo by Adam Urquhart Community Liaison with St. James United Methodist Church in Merrimack E. June Johnsen holds a stack of dresses while surrounded by many more, all of which are set to be blessed today before being sent on their way to girls in Guatemala.

MERRIMACK – In an effort to make a positive impact in the lives of potential sex trafficking victims, St. James United Methodist Church in Merrimack is joining an international initiative, and will be providing more than 100 dresses to at-risk girls in Guatemala.

That initiative, Dress a Girl Around the World, is a campaign under Hope 4 Women International (501(c)(3) organization). Both churchgoers and groups in the community have been sewing and stitching handmade dresses since the fall, and today those dresses will be blessed before being shipped.

Community liaison with the church, E. June Johnsen, said they have a contact person in Massachusetts who has a list of people, either missionaries themselves, or who know missionaries that the dresses will be sent to. She said it is a big savings for the church, because they do not have to pay postage. She said the idea came from her longtime friend Diane Tate, who also attends the church.

“She’s taking them to Tennessee,” Johnsen said. “She has a childhood friend, they’ve been good friends and kept in touch for years, and she is a missionary in Guatemala. That’s why they’re going there first. They won’t all go there everytime we send them, they’ll go to different places.”

Although this is a first for the church, they plan to continue this initiative moving forward, aiming to aid girls in other countries as well. Johnsen also said there were several other groups who helped make dresses, including the Merrimack Garden Club, Merrimack Senior Center and Reeds Ferry Women’s Club to name a few. She said the initiative was posted on the church’s bulletin board and that people saw it, wanted to get involved and it just sort of blossomed from there.

“It’s the kind of thing you can do at your own pace,” Johnsen said.

The smallest dress is a size 3, and then the rest go on up to a size 14 so that there is a dress available for everyone. Johnsen said the idea behind this is to prevent girls living in poverty from being targeted as a potential victim of sex trafficking. She said a lot of these girls are living in some pretty impoverished conditions, and that if a predator see’s a girl in a nice, new dress they may steer clear from her and move onto someone else. Each dress has a tag stitched on that reads, “Dress a girl around the world,” and she said the idea is that if a predator see’s that they will know the girl has contact with someone and is being looked after. However, other girls living in these areas have nothing, and may just wear rags, making them appear as an easier target.

“I know that one of the things that they say is this is probably the only dress these girls will ever get that’s new, that’s how poor it is, and they have nothing else generally,” Johnsen said.

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