A Los Angeles Charity Gives Needy Girls Some Prom-Night Glamour

Every month in Los Angeles County, more than 800 children who have been abused or neglected are removed from their parents’ custody and put in foster care. After that, until adulthood, all their major life decisions—such as where they live and go to school—must be approved by a judge. So a less than life-or-death detail such as the high-school prom might slip through the cracks.

“Youths in foster care can’t take for granted some of our society’s basic rites of passage, like prom night,” says Dilys Tosteson Garcia, executive director of Court Appointed Special Advocates for Children of Los Angeles, or CASA/LA.

The charity’s main mission is to recruit, train, and support volunteers (currently, 300 of them) who advocate for the nearly 25,000 foster children under court jurisdiction in Los Angeles. In the course of regular visits with the children they assist, CASA/LA volunteers frequently become the most stable adult presence in a foster child’s life—and, often, the only one not paid to care for them.

And one day each year, the volunteers also get to play fairy godmother.

For the past 10 years, CASA/LA has organized a “Glamour Gowns” event to make sure that girls in foster care are granted what Ms. Tosteson Garcia calls “a true princess prom experience.”

During last month’s Glamour Gowns event, 200 volunteers worked to transform a Los Angeles Convention Center ballroom into a one-stop prom shop. More than 400 girls were paired with individual “dressers,” who helped each one pick out the perfect brand-new formal gown and then coordinate it with undergarments, shoes, purses, and jewelry. Hair stylists and makeup artists were also on hand to prepare the girls for the biggest night of their high-school lives.

All the gowns, accessories, and services were donated by Los Angeles designers Masquerade, Chinese Laundry, Jenette Bras, and Smashbox Cosmetics, among others.

Although CASA/LA’s $1.7-million annual budget comes from a combination of government and private support, its Glamour Gowns program is financed separately, with major contributions, including a $10,000 grant from Share (a philanthropic organization formed by women in the entertainment industry) and $30,000 raised by the 10-woman, all-volunteer Glamour Gowns operating committee.

“It’s wonderful for the girls who receive this head-to-toe transformation,” says Ms. Tosteson Garcia. “But it’s also wonderful for CASA’s volunteers, who can work so hard on difficult, distressing, and enduring situations. The energy in that room, when all those young women see all those beautiful dresses—it’s just phenomenal. These are young kids that are for the most part pretty cynical; their expectations are low.

“But the smiles on the faces of these girls when they see themselves in the mirror—their spirits are sky-high, and they take yours right along with them.”