Good Works: Local teens and tweens collect with love
Love and thoughtfulness lasted well past Valentine’s Day this month, thanks to a few local youth groups collecting hundreds of pieces of clothing, shoes and goods to gift to nearby organizations in need.
Walking through the front door of La Cañada High School senior Grace Li’s home earlier this month would’ve made any style-loving teen scream with joy. More than 600 items, including pants, purses, shoes, skirts and shirts (for women and men) were strewn across the family room and were being sized, counted and sorted by teens.
“We could probably make outfits for 50 people with this,” Li affirmed.
The student-created group Style & Service was founded in 2018 by longtime friends Li, Stephanie Yu and Shanna Finnigan at LCHS. What started as a fun way to explore community service through fashion has now become a formidable club of 30 students (freshmen to seniors) who seek clothing collections in adult sizes, style them into job interview outfits and then donate their work to Door of Hope family shelter in Pasadena.
A casual post last summer to a local parents Facebook page (thanks to encouragement from Li’s dad) notified neighbors about the teens’ then-new endeavor and launched a surge of donations that Li is thankful for.
“I didn’t expect very much, but then the support and encouragement was really overwhelming,” she said. “It really helped our project a lot.”
The Style & Service group collects clothes, shoes and accessories year-round and obtains personal style preferences from donation recipients so they may individualize and personally style each interview outfit. Last year, Style & Service provided outfits for 10 job-seekers (via Door of Hope) and is looking to partner with more organizations in March.
Learning to work with community organizations has enriched the teens’ outlook. “Even though I don’t feel like I have that much power [as a high school student], I can still do small things that make people’s lives a little bit better … it’s uplifting,” Yu noted.
Donations to Style & Service can be made year-round. Contact @styleandservice on Instagram.
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Meanwhile, across town … the usual buzz and bonding between nightly classes at Revolution Dance Center in Montrose leaped to another level this past month with large bright posters covering the studio’s walls. The hand-drawn artwork asked fellow dancers and families to donate cardboard-free puzzles and hard-cover books for Glendale’s College View School for special education. The artists? RDC’s own Dance Ambassadors, a community-minded performance group of 25 kids ages 8 to 14. (A disclaimer here: one of my daughters is one of the Dance Ambassadors.)
RDC co-owners Julie Kay Stallcup and Melissa Gerard launched the performance-plus-service squad in 2013 with a goal to guide future community volunteers.
“We wanted to provide more performance opportunities for kids who love dance but weren’t yet interested in competition … so we thought to create a group to do service projects alongside their love of dance,” Gerard says.
At most recent count, the Ambassadors collected nearly 100 items for this month’s drive. Eleven-year-old Amilia Jones of La Cañada glowed when she said, “I feel really good about giving back to our community.”
Professional dancer and energetic DA Director Malia Baker values the group’s greater purpose.“We practice interpersonal skills, improv, listening, self-confidence. We’ve learned how to write thank you notes … It’s all about making them better kids through dance, so they can feel confident about helping our community.”
Between shows at local events (Montrose Oktoberfest and Tournament of Roses Post-Parade Float Viewing being a few), the Dance Ambassadors create and complete group service projects (a new one each month). This year’s endeavors have included care kits for the homeless, blankets for Mutt Scouts, Dancers Against Cancer and more. Applications for 2020-21 Dance Ambassadors are available in April at Revolution Dance Center.
