FREEHOLD, NJ – Battling brain cancer, little Giada Demma lay in her pediatric hospital bed, her tiny body practically swimming in a bright green hospital gown.
Her cousin Giuliana Demma remembers looking at the 1-year-old girl and thinking how sad the scene was: a small child inundated with an ugly dress several sizes too big for her.
“I thought to myself, ‘Why does she have to wear that? Why can’t she wear something better?’” Giuliana said.
Inspired by that moment, Giuliana Demma, 13, and her sister Audrina, 11, sewed and donated more than 1,800 colorful dresses with fun prints to hospitalized children in 36 states. They even sent them to Uganda, with three other African countries ready to receive them in the fall.
“I wanted to do something to help kids like (Giada) and give them hospital gowns with pretty, colorful prints that they could feel comfortable in while they were going through difficult times,” Giuliana said.
The family hired a seamstress to make a custom Disney princess dress for little Giada, who was hospitalized in 2017 and is now doing well. But as Giuliana grew over the next four or five years, she developed an interest in sewing and remembered how lost her little cousin looked in a faded, ill-fitting dress years before.
After Giuliana learned to sew, her cousin was no longer hospitalized. But she began to make happy dresses for other sick children. Her first creations were dresses with flamingos and Parisian-themed prints for a child with cancer her aunt knew.
No child is charged for one of their dresses, which are paid for with donations of money and materials. A local Starbucks store awarded the project a $3,000 grant this year. A hospital clothing company, ImageFIRST in Clifton, New Jersey, cleans all clothing for free before it is sent to hospitals, and a group of women in a nearby housing complex and a church youth group help with about 40 volunteers cutting fabric. for girls.
Giuliana receives help from her sister, who also loves to sew. Audrina will help out when Giuliana has homework to do, heading to the basement of her home in Freehold, New Jersey, not far from the Jersey Shore, which has been taken over by the sewing operation.
Audrina’s specialty is sewing small pillows for young patients. They are sent with boxes of markers so recipients can color them however they want while in the hospital.
Audrina made 100 pillows as part of an effort to earn a Bronze Girl Scout award, packaged them and sent them to hospitals. She makes seasonally themed pillows for St. Patrick’s Day, Valentine’s Day and other special moments; Last winter she made 100 snowman pillows.
They are often part of packages created by the girls that include rubber duckies and other toys and a local pediatric cancer charity LIV as a unicorn, includes them in boxes they send to children fighting cancer. The Minnesota Charity International Children’s Surgery took 60 of the gowns to hospitals in Uganda in February and more went to Gambia, Liberia and Ethiopia in the autumn.
Some of the recipients respond by thanking the girls for the dresses and pillows.
“I like seeing the smiles on children’s faces, even if they are going through such a difficult time,” said Audrina, who wants to be a veterinarian.
The girls recently began sewing zippers into brightly colored T-shirts to accommodate infusion ports for chemotherapy or other medications that could allow young patients to not need to wear gowns while hospitalized.
Samantha DiSimone’s son Vito was hospitalized in New York in January due to heart valve disease at 9 months old. The hospital staff brought a sealed package with a gown that Giuliana made from material with a print from the movie “Cars”.
He smiled big when they unpacked the clothes.
“I was so emotional,” Samantha DiSimone said. “You’re in a hospital praying that your son survives surgery, and seeing him in his gown and with a big smile on his face is an incredible thing.”
Soft-spoken but completely at ease recounting her efforts, Giuliana has the poise and maturity of someone beyond her years, even though she just graduated from high school. She wants to be a cancer surgeon and said she loves hearing from the dress recipients.
“I’m so happy to be able to help make a difference for them during this difficult time,” she said. “I want them to feel confident and know that they are an inspiration, that they are loved, that they are strong and brave. They can wear these dresses and have something to cheer them up.”
Melissa Demma, Giada’s mother, said her son’s younger cousins’ motivation to make and distribute dresses “surprises and touches me every day.”
“They are girls and this is what they choose to do, spend time helping others,” she said. “If everyone could be like this, our world would be a better place. It makes me feel better about the future and what this world could be.”
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