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People Taking Action: Norfolk 5th grader collects dresses for girls in need

Posted at 5:55 PM, Mar 21, 2017
and last updated 2017-03-21 17:55:28-04

NORFOLK, Va. - There's a special group of dancers at Norfolk's Jacox Elementary: the Jacox Elite Steppers.

The captain of that step team is 10-year-old JaNiya Taylor, but she's also a member of a school honor roll club that encourages community service.

Her latest project---getting people to donate dresses, so that girls in need will have something to wear on special occasions.

Janiya says she got the idea to start collecting dresses when she was watching an old home video of one of her school programs and she noticed something.

"I wanted to help people, young girls get dresses, because I noticed some of them didn't have dresses to wear. So I asked my grandmother is there anyway I could help?"

And the response of her grandmother, Crystal Taylor, "I was like uhhh, that's a big under taking, but o.k. we'll give it a go. Let's try it; let's see what we can do."

In about two weeks, JaNiya is pretty close to her goal of collecting 100 dresses---her step coach, Bianca Gregory is not surprised, "If you want to do this project we're gonna back you 100 percent and I'm just so proud of her, just from service and just her leadership.....to make a difference, I'm so proud of her."

For those reasons JaNiya was presented with a News 3 People Taking Action award along with a $300 Visa gift card from our community partner Southern Bank.

JaNiya is already thinking about her next project---collecting books for kids in need to read over the summer.