By Kimberly Sanchez-Barraza
For the first time in Redwood High School history, a prom dress give-away was put underway and came back with very successful results on Saturday, March 3, 2022.
The give-away wasn’t used as a raffle winning operation, the dresses were given on a first-come first-serve basis.
Redwood’s drama advisor, Mrs. Galvan, was in charge of the prom dress give-away.
“The dresses were donated to [Redwood High School] when ‘Brides and Maidens’ went out of business, they had a ton of stuff they were trying to get rid of,” says Galvan.
There were “Eight racks stuffed full of dresses from [Brides and Maidens],” and a good amount of those dresses ended up being used for the drama classes to put onstage, however, there were so many dresses that they couldn’t use them all.
“Fifty or sixty were kept for our own use, but a lot of them wouldn’t be put to use,” Galvan says.
With so many dresses being donated, around $10,000 worth, Mrs. Galvan was able to give back not only to the student body at Redwood, but also to the community.
“Mostly juniors and seniors, and a few freshmen had grabbed stuff for formal things that they had, not necessarily prom. There are a couple students who do sewing and alterations and they grabbed some dresses.”
The dresses were given to Redwood with the intention of putting them to good use and Galvan definitely met them with that purpose.
Even then with all the dresses Galvan kept and the students took, there were quite a bit still left over.
“With what we had left over, my student teacher, Mr. Hamata took dresses to Fresno County.”
The Fresno County Public Library was doing a prom dress give-away as well for underprivileged kids and what better way to help than to pass the good along.
“When we first got them donated, it was probably four hundred to five hundred dresses by the time we gave them away, we sent around two hundred and fifty to Fresno.”
The prom dress give-away even caught the attention of locals going on their morning walks.
“We even have moms that were doing their morning walk and were posting it on their Instagram,” says Galvan.
The donations from “Brides and Maidens” created a huge chain reaction leading up to benefitting so many people in the community.
What started off as one thing for Redwood High School’s drama classes ultimately evolved into a greater positive for so many people around the community.
Kimberly Sanchez-Barraza
Tags: clubs & lifestyles, drama, galvan, prom, prom dresses, Redwood, redwood gigantea, redwood high school, redwood journalism, redwood rangers
