There are not many words that can describe the pain of losing a child. Charity organisation Angel Gowns Australia offers grieving families a fleeting moment of beauty amongst the devastation, Eddie Russell reports. It was almost 10 years ago, at a craft show in Caulfield, where Robyn Lavery came across the work of the Angel Gowns group.
After striking up a conversation with one of the stall operators, Ms Lavery quickly became involved with the organisation. “They were looking for people who could sew – I said I can sew,” she said. Since starting out as a seamstress in 2015, the Bacchus Marsh local is now the national vice president, as well as the Victorian state co-ordinator and chair of the seamstress committee at Angel Gowns Australia.
These days her work with the organisation mainly involves contacting hospitals and funeral homes, as well as assessing new seamstresses and packing garments. Angel Gowns Australia is a nationally registered not-for-profit that supplies free burial garments to families that have had a baby die. The garments are made from donated wedding dresses and then donated to hospitals and funeral homes.
It was founded in Canberra by Fiona Kirk, who adopted the idea from a similar organisation in America. Ms Lavery said that a tragedy ignited something in Ms Kirk, and from an act of selflessness grew a national organisation. “There was a sick child, so she took her wedding dress out of her wardrobe and made a dress for that child, she said.
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