99岁老奶奶每天做一条裙子捐给非洲儿童

美国爱荷华州的莉莉安·韦伯（Lillian Weber）老奶奶已经将近100岁了，但年纪没有成为她帮助他人的绊脚石。她每天都在不停的缝制裙子，让那些需要的孩子们有衣服穿。从2011年起她开始做这件事，目前已经完成了超过840件裙子。她的目标是1000件。

她每天早上开始制作一条新裙子，中午休息一下，下午完成。她把制作好的裙子捐献给非洲的“小裙子”（Little Dresses）组织，这是一家专门给非洲的小女孩分发衣服的组织。

她做的每条裙子都会有一点小装饰或小特色，让每个穿上裙子的女孩都有专属自己的小骄傲。她女儿琳达说：“每条裙子她都会在前面加上点什么，让它们看起来很特别，带有她自己的风格。”

莉莉安还获得了WQAD-TV的“把爱传出去”（Pay It Forward）的奖项提名，提名者说道：“我觉得她是某些人的榜样，有些人只是坐着一点点浪费掉自己最后的生命。”

2011年莉莉安召集了一群80岁以上的老奶奶，开始做衣服支持非洲“小裙子”。这个组织的创建者说目前已经收集到了250万条裙子，并且把它们捐给了47个非洲国家。他们的目标是为那些世界上最脆弱的孩子提供衣服并且在这些孩子的心里根植希望。

Lillian Weber is on a mission.

Every day she makes another dress for a small child she’ll never meet.

“I could probably make two a day, but I only make one,” she says.

The dresses are collected and sent overseas to little girls in Africa by a Christian outreach group called “Little Dresses for Africa”.

“I have to be busy,” says Lillian.

And she’s been very busy.

In the past two years she’s made more than 840 dresses and she plans to make 150 more by May 6th of next year.

You see, by next May, Lillian will turn 100 years old and it will be her one thousandth dress.

“It’s just one of those things you learn how to do and enjoy,” she says.

In Lillian’s Scott County farm house are completed dresses for little girls, made from a pattern, but each with extra stitching and individual details, designed to give each child a little extra pride.

“She personalizes them all,” says Lillian’s daughter, Linda Purcell. “It’s not like good enough that she makes the dresses, she has to put something on the front to make it look special, to give it her touch.”

What started as a hobby has become a daily labor of love.

Lillian says she starts work on a dress in the morning, takes a break during the midday, and puts finishing touches in the afternoon.

“I just think she’s somebody to look up to, somebody whose not just sitting around and frittering her life away,” says Tonya Urbatsch, who nominated Lillian for the “Pay It Forward” award.

“I’m amazed at her every day,” adds Linda. “I’m very, very proud of my mother.”

Family and friends will continue to be proud of Lillian, well after her 1000th dress. After all, 1000 is just a number.

“When I get to that thousand, if I’m able to. I won’t quit. I’ll go at it again because there’s no reason to not do nothing.”

When Lillian is finished with her dresses, her daughters deliver them to a Davenport senior living apartment complex where a group of residents have a weekly sewing appointment to make dresses for the charitable organization.

“Little Dresses for Africa” is a Christian charitable organization founded in 2008 in Michigan.

Its founder, Rachel O’Neill, says 2.5 million dresses have been distributed.

The simple dresses are distributed to orphanages, churches, and schools in Africa.

Rachel says she’s traveling to Africa again in September 2014 and February 2015 and hopes to be able to present to a child one of the dresses personally made by Lillian.
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