Canfield students help those in need get a prom dress for less

By Justin Wier

jwier@vindy.com

CANFIELD

“Really? That’s so exciting,” said Alyssa Pappas, senior at Canfield High School.

Another dress had arrived in the school’s library, where Pappas and fellow senior Madison Prindle are hosting a dress drive.

All members of the National Honor Society have to do a service project as seniors. Pappas and Prindle partnered with DIVA Donations, a local charity that collects dresses and provides them to women who can’t afford their own for school dances and other formal events.

Prindle and Pappas said they wanted to do a service project that would benefit people in the area.

“A lot of people in our chapter are doing things outside of the community which benefit people in Third World countries,” Pappas said. “We wanted to do something local.”

Prindle had worked with DIVA Donations in the past, so it came to mind when she and Pappas were looking for a local cause to support.

“We were just discussing what [Kristin Bodendorfer, who founded DIVA Donations] does, and we both love what she’s about,” Prindle said. “[Pappas] was right on board with it.”

Bodendorfer said she’s always excited when someone wants to do a dress drive for her organization. Five years after its founding, DIVA Donations has close to 1,000 dresses in two rooms in the old South Range school building at 11836 South Ave. in North Lima. It didn’t begin that way.

“We started with 15 dresses in my daughter’s closet,” Bodendorfer said.

“And God putting it in my heart that there were other girls that needed these dresses.”

Students can borrow a dress for $35, which is returned after volunteering two hours of their time to a charity. If they choose not to volunteer, DIVA keeps $15 of the deposit, which goes to dry cleaning and maintaining the dresses.

DIVA also provides shoes, jewelry and handbags.

It has partner organizations that do hair and nails and provide free tanning or discounts on flowers.

Bodendorfer said DIVA serves students in Mahoning, Trumbull, Columbiana, Portage and Stark counties.

Pappas said men might not understand how expensive prom can be for a girl because they can easily rent a tuxedo.

“For girls, it’s a lot harder; you can’t really rent dresses,” she said. “So it’s a really expensive thing to do, and there are some people that really can’t afford to get an expensive dress, so helping people out with the expenses and the cost of this we thought would really help a lot of people.”

Initially, the pair worried that people might not bring in dresses because they’re valuable. Pappas said she is reluctant to let her own dresses go.

“We were really nervous that people were going to be in the same mindset as us,” she said.

Early on, there were signs that the effort would be a success.

“We actually had three [dresses] waiting for us before we even had a rack up,” Prindle said. “That was nice, already seeing support.”

Since starting the effort on March 6, they have received 24 dresses. They sit on a rack in the school’s library that is already nearly full.

Prindle and Pappas initially planned on ending the drive March 31, but now they’re considering extending it.

“With the success we’ve been having, I think we’re going to keep it going a little bit longer,” Pappas said. “I mean, prom’s not until May.”