She wanted to help the girls forget about the hurricane and the flood and just be normal high school students for one night, and "lose themselves in the magic of dressing up."

Marisa initially organized friends and family to solicit 100 donated prom dresses to send to girls at one high school. Her efforts, however, turned into a national cause that drew donations from around the country. Eventually, 2,800 dresses filled her parents' Beltsville, Maryland, home.

"There was not one surface that was free," recalls Leathia West, Marisa's mother, who helped her daughter organize the program.

When all of the dresses had been collected, Bill Everett, warehouse manager of E.U. Services, a commercial printing and mailing company in Rockville, Maryland, volunteered to make the 20-hour drive to take the dresses to New Orleans. His employer paid for the trip.

Everett says that when the girls opened up the trailer truck and saw all the gowns, they burst out crying. "It was like Christmas," he recalls.

The photo above shows Marisa, seated on the floor and wearing a red gown, with prom dress recipients from the all-girls Cabrini High School, half of whose families lost everything they owned in the hurricane.

A Slightly Different Approach

This year, Marisa wanted a way to help while living in her small dorm room at Harvard, where she is a freshman. She came up with the idea of a "Gifts of Glitz" campaign, and is helping to collect jewelry for the girls to wear. Marisa is running the program with Brenda Smoak, owner of Alchemy, a Silver Spring, Maryland, shop that sells artists' works, including jewelry. Last year, Smoak's store was a drop-off location for dresses; some 1,200 were left at Alchemy.

Now, the women are actively soliciting jewelry–real or costume, new or gently used–that is youthful and appropriate for teens to wear to the prom. "I know that my eyes shine a little brighter when I'm wearing a favorite pair of earrings," says Marisa. "I want to make sure this happens for many young women in New Orleans."

Not only is Brenda Smoak again using her store as a drop-off location, but each of the 26 jewelry designers whose work is featured in her store has promised to donate jewelry to the "Gifts of Glitz" campaign.

In addition, on March 24th, she hosted and taught a free jewelry-making class for members of the public who wished to create jewelry pieces to donate to the New Orleans prom girls.

Donations to "Gifts of Glitz" are being "gratefully accepted" until April 1, at which time the women will send the jewelry to New Orleans. Go to www.artandalchemy.com and click on "Events" for information about donating jewelry.

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