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Kate Young, Staff Writer
High school is made up of a string of memorable events, such as homecoming, sports games, plays, the ACT, and the favorite: prom. This final dance can be the best memory for some high school girls, and no girl should miss out on this night merely because she couldn’t afford a dress.
Many girls spend the weeks leading up to prom on the quest for the perfect dress. This can be hard for some girls, when many families are in financial trouble. To solve their problem all they need is a little SALT: the Servant Action Leadership Team to be exact. This group of silent heroes has avoided the limelight until this year with their community-wide Prom Dress Drive. “I had this idea because I was thinking of the girls who couldn’t go to prom because they didn’t have a dress and it wasn’t fair, but Paige Austin convinced me to bring it up at our next SALT meeting,” said junior Sara Riele.
Starting a community-wide event is no small feat. These high school students had to get permission to advertise it at school, promote the event through posters, and spread awareness through word of mouth. “We put up a lot of posters around town,” said senior Callie Wilson who is another member of SALT.
Their hard work and patience paid off. The community and girls in need took notice of posters and talk around school. Nearly seventy dresses were collected and around twenty dresses were given a happy home with several deserving girls. “It was so sweet; the girls were so happy,” said Wilson. The last few Sundays in April were the days to find a dress. The Landing, the youth group for the SALT, opened their doors for a few hours each Sunday for girls who truly needed a dress.
It wasn’t just about the numbers either. This group cared more about the girls than the dresses they tried on. “I couldn’t care less how many dresses we gave away, but what mattered was that this made a difference in the lives of these girls and now they get to go to prom,” said Charley Carpenter, the youth pastor at The Landing.
Come May 8th, there will be plenty of girls smiling at the top of the stairs at Grand March, and they will have a good reason to. This major effort to help high school girls will be remembered for a long time to come. And everyone is welcome to donate this year’s prom dresses for next year.
