Southeast Minnesota women sew hope for girls around the world
Chatfield woman nurtures effort to help dress needy children
February 27, 2021 — 1:26pm
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After Denise Smalley and her husband, Charles, retired several years ago, they moved from the Chicago area back to the small town of Chatfield, Minn., where Charles grew up.
They had visited family there for decades, so it only made sense to join the church they'd regularly attended when they came to the town in the rolling hills outside of Rochester, St. Paul Evangelical Lutheran Church.
The town immediately felt like home. Denise kept in touch with a close friend from her church in Chicago and for months that friend kept mentioning an organization she'd gotten involved in: Dress A Girl Around the World. The friend told Denise that the Iowa-based nonprofit made dresses for girls worldwide. Over the past decade, in fact, the organization had sewn and shipped more than a million dresses to 81 countries.