COEUR d’ALENE — A spring direct action project has threads running throughout Coeur d’Alene.

Ant’oqmi’wes, or the United Together club at Coeur d'Alene Charter Academy, challenged itself to help fellow students get styled ahead of their prom by collecting dresses and hosting a dress drive.

About 40 of 137 prom dresses found a home during a pop-up event at North Idaho College.  

Abby Fitzgerald said Ant’oqmi’wes members were thrilled to collect more dresses than they expected. 

“It's really cool how the word got out,” Fitzgerald said.

The rest were later transported to the Coeur Community Closet at Coeur d’Alene High School and Lake City High School ahead of their proms.

“They do stuff like this for all members of the community like we were trying to do,” Fitzgerald said.

Paula Lyon of Coeur Closet and the Coeur d'Alene School District said she was happy to see the students being civic-minded and finding ways to “recycle and reuse dresses.”

Inclusivity and community-building are the main missions of the club and by helping more people be able to attend a prom dressed and feeling their best, the United Together members said they achieved their goals.

“It's sounding like the schools in the area are going to start working together on this kind of event and making it a more unified and central thing,” Fitzgerald said. 

Co-club leaders Fitzgerald and Ari Begalman took on the challenge of throwing together an impromptu event to reuse prom dresses.

An exciting development for the students running the pop-up dress event as they were interviewed by an online fashion magazine called People Over Product because of their efforts to connect students to dresses that were new to them and recycle clothing.