High school proms can be the highlight of adolescence for teenage girls.

“When you’re in high school, it’s so important,” said Wendy Sims, director of the Bryan County Family Connection. “[For girls] if you can’t have a dress, you can’t go to prom.”

In Bryan County, one Richmond Hill High School senior has been working to change that. She wants to give all girls the chance to go to the prom in a beautiful dress for free.

Elizabeth Crofts, 17, started the Making Memories Prom Dress Drive in 2009. She collects gently used prom dresses and evening gowns and gives them to Teen Line, a used clothing store run by United Way and Bryan County Family Connection, in Pembroke. There is a prom dress drive from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m. Saturday at the Richmond Hill Library.

Crofts said the drive spawned from a Girl Scout project. In 2009, she was working toward a Gold Award, the highest award a Girl Scout can achieve, and was thinking about organizing a clothing drive when someone mentioned a prom dress drive.

“She took the idea and ran with it,” Sims said of Crofts.

For more, pick up a copy of the Jan. 29 edition of the News.