Fay­ola K J Fras­er

Sec­ondary school grad­u­a­tion, com­mon­ly re­ferred to as “grad”, is of­ten hailed as one of the biggest events of a young per­son’s life. From ear­ly on, young men and women spend count­less hours dis­cussing the core tenets of an ex­cit­ing, un­for­get­table grad­u­a­tion night—the date, the af­ter-par­ty plans, and most im­por­tant­ly, the out­fit.

Some young peo­ple are ex­clud­ed from these ado­les­cent con­ver­sa­tions, side­lined by their fam­i­ly’s in­abil­i­ty to af­ford the nec­es­sary trap­pings of grad­u­a­tion, such as a beau­ti­ful dress for the young woman or a smart suit for the young man.

Rober­ta Collins, how­ev­er, a be­liev­er that “fi­nances shouldn’t be a bar­ri­er to mile­stone events,” be­gan her project sev­en years ago to re­move these stu­dents from the mar­gins. “Roy­al­ty for a Night”, a cloth­ing do­na­tion sys­tem, is es­sen­tial­ly Collins’ love let­ter to stu­dents from low­er-in­come fam­i­lies on the cusp of one of the most an­tic­i­pat­ed days of their young lives. 

Di­ag­nosed with Celi­ac dis­ease at 38 af­ter suf­fer­ing for years from fa­tigue and di­ges­tive is­sues, Collins knew some­thing had to change. She de­vot­ed her­self to her health jour­ney, elim­i­nat­ing gluten from her di­et as the “flour in all our foods was killing me.” Celi­ac dis­ease is a chron­ic au­toim­mune dis­or­der trig­gered by gluten in­ges­tion, which re­sults in dam­age to the in­testi­nal lin­ing and caus­es di­ar­rhoea, fa­tigue, weight loss, bloat­ing, and anaemia.

Af­ter re­mov­ing gluten from her di­et, Collins al­so be­gan to fol­low an ex­er­cise pro­gramme, walk­ing con­sis­tent­ly and los­ing weight while gain­ing en­er­gy and en­hanc­ing her mood. In­spired by the dra­mat­ic ef­fect these changes had on her qual­i­ty of life, she de­cid­ed to start an or­gan­i­sa­tion ded­i­cat­ed to help­ing women.

“I want­ed to share my ex­pe­ri­ences and let women know that no mat­ter their age or eco­nom­ic sta­tus, they too could pri­ori­tise them­selves and keep their health in­tact.” Thus, her NGO, Yes She Can, was born. When asked why she de­cid­ed to name it as such, Collins says, “We say we can’t make time for things, es­pe­cial­ly when you have a hus­band and chil­dren. But we can do so much more than we tell our­selves.”

 With a group of in­spired women as the core mem­bers of Yes She Can, Collins be­gan par­tic­i­pat­ing in half marathons, Hard­core Caribbean, triathlons, drag­on boat­ing, and archery. She al­so sought out and com­plet­ed her board cer­ti­fi­ca­tion at the In­sti­tute of In­te­gra­tive Nu­tri­tion, and she is now on­ly one of two board-cer­ti­fied health coach­es in the coun­try.

 In 2015, a post on Face­book went vi­ral in which a sec­ondary school teacher, frus­trat­ed by the re­al­i­ty of her stu­dents not be­ing able to par­tic­i­pate in grad­u­a­tion be­cause of fi­nan­cial lim­i­ta­tions, asked for do­na­tions of dress­es from her Face­book com­mu­ni­ty. This ini­tial do­na­tion dri­ve, en­ti­tled ‘Princess for a Day’, reached far and wide, and Collins felt mo­ti­vat­ed to con­tin­ue the next year, even af­ter the orig­i­nal teacher could not con­tin­ue due to the labour-in­ten­sive na­ture of the project.

In 2017, as she had her NGO that was al­ready ac­tive, Collins de­cid­ed that “it was too amaz­ing to fall by the way­side, so I took it over as a so­cial project un­der Yes She Can.”

Adapt­ing the orig­i­nal name from ‘Princess for a Day’ to ‘Roy­al­ty for a Night’ to in­clude young men, she re­ceived hun­dreds of do­na­tions from the first year on­ward. She de­vel­oped a sys­tem where her NGO would col­lect do­na­tions from peo­ple who dropped off gar­ments at part­ner lo­ca­tions in the North West, East, and South. Then she would sort items suit­able for grad­u­a­tions and cu­rate a bou­tique for the re­cip­i­ents.

“It’s not bags of clothes on the floor,” Collins says. “We rack ac­cord­ing to size and colour; this year, we even have man­nequins set up. The stu­dents get a full shop­ping ex­pe­ri­ence, and I have vol­un­teers as floor at­ten­dants who help guide them and sup­port them in try­ing on the right out­fit.”

This year’s dis­tri­b­u­tion al­so boast­ed work­shops, in­clud­ing free ses­sions on din­ing eti­quette and make-up ap­pli­ca­tion, to help stu­dents feel ful­ly pre­pared for their big night. Collins al­so fields do­na­tions of gift vouch­ers from make-up artists, hair­dressers, bar­bers, and nail techs, of­fer­ing some stu­dents in need a free ser­vice to make them look and feel their best. 

Ac­knowl­edg­ing that naysay­ers are a chal­lenge in any project, Collins re­counts the neg­a­tive com­ments she has got­ten from peo­ple who view grad­u­a­tion out­fits as a friv­o­li­ty com­pared to the ex­treme pover­ty that ex­ists in T&T.

“I can’t solve world hunger,” she laughs, “but I can help a young per­son feel amaz­ing and help them cel­e­brate a huge mile­stone.”

Not­ing that her project is not on­ly about an out­fit, she feels proud of the self-es­teem, con­fi­dence, and self-worth that she in­spires in these young peo­ple by mak­ing them feel spe­cial.

Re­mem­ber­ing a young woman who was heav­i­ly preg­nant and look­ing for a grad­u­a­tion dress, Collins will nev­er for­get that the stu­dent was moved to tears when she found the dress to flat­ter her chang­ing fig­ure, re­liev­ing her of the dis­com­fort she felt.

“That’s the rea­son right there,” Collins says. “Those mo­ments are what make this chal­leng­ing, tir­ing, and fi­nan­cial­ly dif­fi­cult process all worth it.”

 The so­cial im­pact of this project is not the on­ly rea­son that Collins should be ad­mired, but the rip­ple ef­fect it has on the en­vi­ron­ment is al­so ex­treme­ly sig­nif­i­cant.

In a world where fast fash­ion has been to the detri­ment of our world, Roy­al­ty for a Night is in­stead pro­mot­ing slow fash­ion, char­ac­terised by preser­va­tion and up­cy­cling. “There is so much fab­ric in land­fills and so many ma­te­ri­als, such as se­quins, are not biodegrad­able and stay in land­fills for hun­dreds of years,” she says.

“We give gar­ments new life, pro­vid­ing an­oth­er lay­er of joy that some­one can feel by reusing per­fect­ly good cloth­ing.”

 Rober­ta Collins is shar­ing joy by mak­ing old things new again. Com­mu­ni­ty-mind­ed and self-ef­fac­ing, she strives to give less for­tu­nate young men and women in T&T an op­por­tu­ni­ty to cel­e­brate their achieve­ments in style.

En­cour­ag­ing not on­ly peo­ple to give with love but al­so call­ing for young peo­ple to see re­ceiv­ing these beau­ti­ful gar­ments as an act of love. It is this giv­ing, gen­er­ous love that cre­ates the great­est im­pact, en­sur­ing that no child is left out of what is the cen­tre of al­most every teenag­er’s world.