Located in the basement of the Memorial Union, the Workspace is a multi-media art studio where students, faculty and the Ames community can create, construct, invent and discover a fun diversion from a typical day while meeting others as well as taking part in classes the Workspace offers. 

The Workspace hosted a work weekend from Jan. 18 to Jan. 20 for  “Little Dresses for Africa”, a non profit organization dedicated to provide relief to children in Central Africa.  

This past Martin Luther King Jr. weekend, volunteers assisted in making dresses from colorful pillowcases. The dresses not only give clothing to young girls, but are also used as a medium to gain communication with young people in Africa.

Little Dresses for Africa also uses the dresses as an opportunity to hold various classes and camps that increase knowledge in nutrition and sanitation. Little Dresses for Africa hopes that through these dresses they can touch as many lives as possible. 

A woman from Michigan started being involved in this cause after seeing the need for clothes in many African villages. Beverly Nutt, a volunteer from this past weekend, hopes that through these dresses she can “motivate” young African girls to see hope. 

She explained the process of making these dresses which entails “getting loose fabric like pillow cases and bed sheets then cutting and threading to form dresses.”

“I have personally worked on 250 dresses during my involvement with Little Dresses for Africa,” Nutt said. 

This event is hosted at least twice a semester and has been the product of 465 dresses sent to children by the ISU community, including 65 dresses sent to a local church in South America.

Malika Jeffries-El, a chemistry professor, said she received an email that was circulated regarding the event and thought it would be “a good activity to do on Martin Luther King Jr. day.”

The Workspace hosts many other craft opportunities for the Iowa State community to be involved in, including the opportunity and project of making arm warmers out of socks this January.  

The Workspace also offers classes ranging from working on pottery to Middle Eastern belly dancing.

To get involved in what the Workspace has to offer this semester and more information go to www.workspace.mu.iastate.edu .