The generosity of New Brunswickers has made graduation season a bit less stressful for some high school students.
It all started several weeks ago when Lori Pellerin, a high school teacher in St. George, posted on Facebook.
Pellerin’s request was simple: she was looking for donations of prom dresses for students in need at Fundy Middle and High School.
That post was shared more than 70 times and made its way to Cheryl DesRoches, who lives more than two hours away in Shediac.
“In my community, I’m very involved in a lot of stuff. When I saw Lori’s post, I thought ‘I think I can make this happen,’” DesRoches said in a phone interview.
With more than 3,800 friends on her Facebook page, DesRoches made a post of her own on the social media site to try and gather donations.
She thought her efforts might lead to between 20 and 25 donations, but her post quickly blew up and exceeded her expectations.
“Pure strangers coming to my door, some people would contact me from Moncton saying ‘hey, I know I don’t know, but can we make arrangements.’ I would either meet them in Moncton or they would come and drop it off in Shediac,” said DesRoches.
Twenty dresses became 40, then 50. Eventually, she had 110 prom dresses donated from people across southeastern New Brunswick.
DesRoches said most of the dresses were donated by recent high school graduates.
“The smile on their face giving the prom dress to me because they know that someone else will be using it was one of the fun parts for me,” she said.
DesRoches and her husband drove the donated dresses to St. George earlier this week so they could be dropped off at the school.
The number of dresses collected by DesRoches far outweighed the need for Fundy High. The school plans to create a website to log all of the dresses so other high schools can see what is available as a donation to students in need.
“I was a single mom with twin boys and my mom was a single mom, so we went through some hard times,” said DesRoches.
“I can’t even imagine saying ‘no’ to your daughter that they can’t buy that particular dress or they can’t go to the prom because she doesn’t have a dress. No one deserves that.”
