I ran a global clothing drive for 1 year. It made me rethink everything.

1,000 clothing donations felt huge when I wrote it down. But I wasn’t thinking big enough. For the last year, I’ve been running a global clothing drive to collect women’s professional attire across 3 countries: Australia, the United States, and the United Kingdom. It’s not everyday you hear about someone doing something like this, but it was an opportunity I would never have guessed I’d have. Last year when I competed at International United Miss, a scholarship pageant in Florida, I was awarded the National Ambassador title after winning an essay competition about empowering women through secondhand fashion with a global clothing drive I named Connected by Clothes. It was truly very on brand for me.

Most people would take a win and sit with it for a while. Mull it over. I flew home to Sydney, Australia with my new sash and crown, and the knowledge that I had only *one year *to build something more ambitious than I’d ever done before. I’m no stranger to chasing the big and difficult things in life. I’ve been an international model, run my own business, and have a bunch of letters behind my name from the amount of university degrees I’ve done. But the global clothing drive is different. It’s the first time I *really *put myself to the test, the first time to do something that had never been done this way before, something I could invite the women in my orbit into and let them feel, firsthand, what sisterhood actually looks like when it’s put into action.

I’ve seen first-hand the power of clothing. I volunteer at Dress for Success on weekends, the organisation that received all of the donations from the clothing drive. It’s a worldwide charity that empowers women into their next chapters, through professional styling or career support. I volunteer to style women for job interviews and new roles, and after 3 years of styling, I knew there had to be something more I could do. In my time as a volunteer, I have no idea how many women I’ve styled. I’m guessing at least 100 women, and that’s being conservative about it. The styling was never just about the clothes. It was about being someone for someone else, to help them see that they can do the big difficult thing, even if it feels unachievable right now. It’s the belief that the clothing inspires.

But why 1,000 donations? This might sound funny but it was the biggest number I could think of at the time. There’s honestly no crazy, emotional story behind it. It’s like when a kid says they want to be a millionaire, which in reality, isn’t as big a number as they think it is. I could’ve picked 500, or 700, or any other number. But I chose 1,000 to represent the biggest impact I thought I could make. I thought I was absolutely shooting for the moon, especially starting out with about 30 donations in the first month. Looking back, I realise now that 1,000 donations was only about half the journey.

In the last 12 months I’ve done things I never thought I would. My living room here in Australia overflowed with donations. I would come home to donations piled on my doorstep and an inbox pinging with requests for donation pick ups from the people in my suburb. I travelled to Queensland and my friends from across so many pageant systems, including my International United Miss Australia sister queens, brought me bags and bags of clothes to pack in my suitcase to take home. About 3-months into the global clothing drive, my partner helped me load up our car for a donation drop off at Dress for Success. We could hardly see out of the car windows. I was sharing the passenger seat with three donation bags alone. The weight of the car was enough to make it feel like we’d put wheels on a submarine and decided to take it for a spin on land.

In January, a friend in Ohio who I’d met through International United Miss donated about 200 pieces to her local Dress for Success. Sometimes when you start something that feels so big, you don’t realise that other people are watching, too. It was the first international donation. I’ve had women and girls across all International United Miss age divisions donate to their local Dress for Success, from places I’ve only ever heard of in movies or books and never been to, including the United Kingdom. For the following months, at anywhere between 1am and 3am in the morning, I’d be squinting into the light of my phone screen, messaging women to help them figure out where their closest Dress for Success is and tallying their donations.

Sometimes you become so wrapped in the work that you have to re-learn how to let people share the load. It’s been my biggest learning as National Ambassador and founder of Connected by Clothes. It’s also the biggest thing I’m grateful for. I had one year to make a difference, and I didn’t do it alone. The grand total? 2,013 donations. More than double the original target. It’s beyond anything I ever expected and in** **that one year, aside from the number of donations collected, I’ve discovered something equally as important. I’ve found a community of women of all ages and all places, who are connected by their mission to make a better world for women. One outfit at a time.