Rock Island Today

Royal Neighbors of America has awarded a $5,000 “Nation of Neighbors” grant to Viola resident McKara Caldwell, according to a press release from the organization. 

The grant will help Caldwell expand her nonprofit, Stitching a Legacy, which gives handmade dresses to girls in need, and create a website, the release said. 

Caldwell, a freshman at Indiana Wesleyan University and a Royal Neighbors member, founded Stitching a Legacy after hosting sew-a-thons for girls in group homes and making dresses for them. Since then, Caldwell and her team of volunteers have created almost 1,000 dresses and given them to girls in shelters, hospitals, group homes and refugee safe places, the release said.  

From left, Joni Caldwell, McKara Caldwell’s mother; Susan Kenney Cotter, Royal Neighbors chief marketing officer; and McKara Caldwell, grant recipient

“McKara shares Royal Neighbors’ commitment to empowering women and girls and improving communities through philanthropy,” Susan Kenney Cotter, chief marketing officer at Royal Neighbors, said in the release. “It is members like McKara who make our mission possible, and we are honored to help her build a legacy of improving young girls’ lives, one dress at a time.”

Cotter presented Caldwell with the grant at the Royal Neighbors home office in Rock Island, according to the release.