In honor of #GivingTuesday, I want to talk about an organization called Dressember.

What is Dressember?

To quote the organization, Dressember is “a collaborative movement leveraging fashion and creativity to restore dignity to all women.”  In a nutshell, women wear dresses all throughout December to raise awareness and funds to fight human trafficking.  (Be sure you check out the founder’s TEDx Talk at the link above if you have a few minutes.  It’s an inspiring peek into the usefulness of any passion for good.)

Trafficking is a huge problem.  It’s a form of slavery, and frequently involves sexual exploitation.  I’m going to quote Dressember founder Blythe Hill again, because she does a good job of putting the issue in a nutshell.

I began learning that slavery exists in every city in the world, around every major sporting event, at brickyards, brothels, truck stops and massage parlors. It’s estimated that there are currently somewhere between 20 and 36 million people trapped in slavery—more than any other point in history.

How can you help?

So how can you help?  What can you do?  Well, there are other ways to get involved in fighting trafficking, of course, but specifically in tandem with Dressember, you have a few options.

1.  Wear a dress.  Duh.  That is the whole theme here, right?  So you can participate in the wear-a-dress-every-day-this-month challenge.  Raise awareness among those in your offline circles.

2. Use social media to raise awareness.  The #Dressember and #youcandoanythinginadress hashtags will help loop you in with others, but anything you share on social media can make a difference.  Post pics of your OOTDs (outfit of the day) and caption them appropriately.  Tweet about the cause.  Whatever.

3. Raise funds.  This goes hand-in-hand with #1.  Join one of the groups via the website, and you can raise money “-a-thon” style.  You’re probably familiar with walk-a-thons, rock-a-thons, etc. as a means of raising money.  The same idea applies here.  You put in the effort (although in this case, it’s more about creativity than muscle, since all you have to do is get dressed.  For my chronically ill ladies, I know getting dressed every day for a month can be pretty ambitious!) and others pledge donations based on your follow-through.

4. Shop.  Yes, really.  Dressember has several partners that make dresses especially for the campaign.  These dresses are created in facilities which are, themselves, restorative options for those rescued from trafficking.  (If you need jewelry to jazz up your dresses, Trades of Hope is all fair trade, and some of their partners are with post-trafficking projects, as well.)

I’m here to help you.

My primary contribution this year is to help you.  I’m going to post some things to make it easier to figure out the dress-wearing thing for those who normally don’t wear dresses.  Some of you might be wondering things like, “how do I make just a few dresses work for a whole month?” or, “what about the cold?”  I’ve got you.  Mostly, these posts are coming up, but here are a couple from the archives you might find helpful:

• Secondhand Savings: How to Dress Your Best for Less (has some general tips, as well as some of my favorite sources)
• Shoe tips for dresses (The links to the examples probably don’t work anymore, as this is a very old post, but if you’re at a total loss, the tips might still help.)
• Refashioning hacks
• More detail about bleaching blacks

Some of those will help if you need to spruce up your wardrobe a little to be prepared to wear dresses for a whole month — without spending a lot.