So I guess you heard, huh? I actually can’t believe it! I mean on the one hand, a Do It In A Dress campaign with no more dresses? Eep! But on the other hand, holy calamity we’ve run out of dresses?! That’s AWESOME!
As climate change marched slowly forward and ravaged us with bushfires earlier this year and Covid came a knockin’, we officially hit the panic button. In the initial stages when everyone was still working out what it all meant, we lost funding and had to make some changes — and some pretty big ones at that!
But lo and behold, slowly and surely, our funders came back on board and our community rallied to help us keep the lights on (you really are an amazing bunch and we love ya for it).
BUT, it was still a global pandemic after all so we prepared for a smaller, leaner Do It In A Dress than we’ve had in previous years. We put in a pretty massive dress order the year before that we were pretty sure would see us through the campaign, so we ordered no additional dresses. We printed no additional posters. We moved what we had to Bec’s home office, and we got ready to launch.
Well.
Now look what you’ve gone and done!
YOU’VE FAR EXCEEDED OUR EXPECTATIONS YET AGAIN with your dedication to girls’ education. Bravo!!!
So far this year, we’ve already had more than 1500 people sign up to do it in a dress … and it’s not even GO month yet! We started with a target of $200,000 and now we’ve bumped it up to $300,000 — that’s how much we believe in you.
BUT, it means we’ve run out of dresses — and we can’t buy more, sorry! We’ve set ourselves a very strict policy when it comes to purchasing garments, that they must all be ethically sourced and produced by factories that pay a living wage, which takes a whole lot longer than just ordering them from any old place. Because can you guess who the majority of garment factory workers are? Women — and we very much want them to get paid a living wage. Gender justice, remember?
So, we’ve made the (rather easy when you think about it) decision to stick to our current supplier of dresses because we can guarantee they’ll be ethically made. We live and breathe our values and sacrificing this principal for the sake of getting more dresses sooner just didn’t seem right to us, even if it meant possibly disappointing you.
It’s a toughy, but we hope you’re with us on this one because we know it was the right thing to do <3
So! You’ve signed up for Do It In A Dress and we can’t give you a dress (eek!). Here are your options:
- You can wear an old school dress if you still have yours! Or you could borrow one … or maybe see if you can pick one up at an op-shop! We will send you a welcome pack and a racing bib (just like the ones on our One Girl dresses) that says ‘Do It In a Dress’, so you can let people know you’re raising money for girls’ education.
- Not everyone who does Do It In A Dress actually wears one — depending on your challenge you can fundraise without it! We will send you a welcome pack and our alternate racing bib that simply says ‘I’m doing a challenge to raise money for girls’ education’.
So don’t stress, we know you’d be in a dress if you could. It’s the fundraising part that really counts to get girls back in the classroom once schools open. And we can’t wait to have you as part of the One Girl community.
Love, the One Girl team x
