A dress or suit for year 12 formal can be expensive, and in a cost-of-living crisis it’s far from a necessity.
And although school formal may seem trivial to some, to graduating students it can mean the world.
That’s the thinking behind local resident Tammy Robinson’s Formally Ever After – a home-run service that has provided free formal gear to over 4000 students from over 200 schools and organisations.
“To a 17-year-old, formal is everything,” Ms Robinson said.
“It’s the end of their school celebration, it’s like their rite of passage, and when you take that away from them because of something as simple as money, that’s pretty harsh.”
The charity relies solely on donations from the community and has helped people as far away as Geelong.
“We try to empower our young people, we try to give them hope and we try to lift them up so they know the whole community cares about them,” Ms Robinson said.
“They’re blown away by how much people give to them.”
She said many students “simply wouldn’t go” to formal without the service.
“And whatever the kids get from here – whether it’s a suit or a dress or jewellery – it’s theirs to keep.
“It’s their special memory.”
She started the charity in 2019 from her home at Woodridge, inspired by her son who was in year 12 at the time.
“I was actually looking for somewhere to donate my kids’ formal wear, but I didn’t find anywhere so I took it to an op-shop,” she said.
“Then I was down on the Gold Coast and saw a similar program there.”
Ms Robinson said she tried to get some Logan locals to donate their formal wear to the Gold Coast charity.
The first donation came from a lady with eight formal dresses.
“When she left, I looked at my son and said there’s something wrong with this picture: we’re about to take eight dresses from Logan and give it to a city that already has a program.
“My son told me there were many kids in his class not going to formal, and I said we needed to fix that.
“He said to me: then do something about it.
“Now the whole bottom level of the house is just formal wear.”
When she’s not administering hundreds of clothes to local teenagers in need, Ms Robinson is serving the older generation.
“I’m an aged care support worker in the community – that’s my real job, that’s how I pay my rent,” she said.
Contact Formally Ever After on 0401 508 759.
