By Charles Lefebvre

Skateboard Association collects grad dresses for girls in Mexico

Mar 23, 2018 | 5:32 PM

MEDICINE HAT, AB — The Medicine Hat Skateboard Association is thanking the community for coming forward and helping them provide dresses for young women in Mexico.

Members of the club are travelling to Mexico at the end of the month on a humanitarian mission to build homes and a women’s shelter in the country operated by El Refugio. One of the organization’s requests for the skateboarders was to bring dresses for quinceañeras, an event in Latin American culture that celebrates women when they turn 15 years old.

Davie James, one of the members of the association, said the initial request was difficult for the members.

“Seeing as the majority of us are male skateboarders, we didn’t really have any sort of clue of how to get a bunch of dresses out there,” he said.

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James said the club made a post on Facebook, asking residents who had grad dresses they didn’t need anymore to bring donations to The Summit. James said the response to the post was incredible.

“People have just been reaching out to us, saying ‘I have a dress kicking around at home, can I bring it in?’” he said. “We’ve just been getting overflowed…we’re really grateful with how the community has been treating us, and bringing in these dresses for these young girls.”

James says the club has received over 90 dresses. The final day they were accepting donations was on Friday.

James says helping in the community is important for the club.

“We’re trying to change the image of skateboarders here in the community,” he said. “We sort of have that image of being bad boys, and causing trouble throughout the neighbourhood and ruining ledges and rails on city buildings, but at the same time, we’re trying to make a difference in our community, we’re trying to do bottle drives for organization like the Women’s Shelter. We’re trying to show that there’s a different side to skateboarding than just being a menace to society.”

James thanked people in Medicine Hat for their donations.

The club leaves for Mexico on March 30, and James says he expects it to be eye-opening and emotional for the club.