In May, Lillian Weber will turn 100. By then, the Iowa woman plans to have sewn 1,000 dresses for African girls in need. She has a good start, making one dress every day for the past two years. “It’s just what I like to do,” Weber tells The Quad-City Times.

By August, Weber had donated more than 840 handmade frocks to Little Dresses for Africa, a Christian nonprofit that distributes them to impoverished young girls around the world. The clothing is sent to orphanages, churches and schools in Africa with the goal of providing self-worth to the world’s most vulnerable girls, according to organization’s website. The nonprofit has collected more than 2.5 million dresses, distributed to 47 countries in Africa, as well as Haiti, Honduras, Thailand and Mexico.

Weber starts each dress in the morning and, after a midday break, finishes the garment in the afternoon. “She personalizes them all,” Weber’s daughter Linda tells WQAD-TV, adding that each dress has something special on the front to give it her mother’s unique touch.

After she meets her 1,000-dress goal, Weber has no plans to slow down. “When I get to that thousand, if I’m able to, I won’t quit,” she tells WQAD-TV. “I’ll go at it again.”

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