Yvonne Taufa Falealili, 25, is the founder of a new charity that helps send South Auckland teenagers to their school ball. She’s also an Onehunga youth worker, a former Miss Tonga New Zealand, and an internet star, with a video of her now-husband Ben’s spoken-word flash-mob proposal to her in Long Beach, California, having reached close to 200,000 hits online.
Photo: Lena Hesselgrave
“In the Pasifika community, they’re really well known – everyone knows Ben and Yvonne,” says Fatima Vaaga, chief executive of Affirming Works, the mentoring and education organisation for South Auckland youth where Yvonne works. “For old school people like me that’s amazing. You’ve got 1000 likes for just one photo. How can you have that many friends?”
Fatima says Yvonne’s prominence within the Pasifika community has been crucial to the success of The Cinderella Project, the charity Yvonne launched earlier this year. The initiative loans dresses, gives makeovers and hosts pre-ball events to help South Auckland girls who are struggling to cover the costs of attending their school balls.
Yvonne has so far relied largely on Instagram (on which she has 2000 followers) and Facebook to spread the word about the charity and appeal for donations. And the community has responded. Two weeks ago, a package with eight dry-cleaned ball dresses, with a hand-written note with each dress’ story pinned to its hanger, arrived from one of Yvonne’s followers, who lives in Arizona.
Since starting The Cinderella Project a humble clothes-rack and shelf, filled with the charity’s chiffon and satin donations, have popped up behind Yvonne’s desk at the Affirming Works office. The charity is Yvonne’s idea and all her work, but it fits perfectly with the organisation’s philosophy, Fatima says.
The Cinderella Project isn’t just for the girls who are getting make-overs. Families are encouraged to hang out at the Otahuhu Community Cafe.
She says the Cinderella Project is filling a need in the South Auckland community and Yvonne is the perfect person to be leading it: “It’s not very often in Pacifica families that girls get all dolled up. Unfortunately, in South Auckland, families don’t always have the money to do that and I definitely see that Yvonne has identified a need that’s real and simple at the same time.”
The Cinderella Project isn’t just for the girls who are getting make-overs. Families are encouraged to hang out at the Otahuhu Community Café, for snacks and non-alcoholic drinks for the pre-ball events, while the makeover is happening on the mezzanine floor.
With no mirror in the room, the girls can’t see themselves until their makeover is complete, which means they share in their family’s surprise when they see themselves for the first time.
Yvonne says the charity is a natural extension of her youth work, which takes her into about 10 schools around South Auckland. It’s important to make a big deal out of the ball and for students to allow themselves to feel special, she says. “I would go into the schools and a lot of the girls would be stressing out because the ball was coming and they had to pay for school fees first to be able to get a ticket. A lot of them were saying ‘We are not going because we can’t afford to’.
“So I thought, I’ve got lots of dresses at home, and I know heaps of girls who have heaps of dresses too, and most of the time we only wear them once and then just hang them in the closet.”
Yvonne says she loves seeing the transformation in the students who come through The Cinderella Project. Girls arrive to get pampered with their shoulders hunched and leave to go to the ball feeling confident and beautiful: “I’ve had a few girls in tears because they’re not used to seeing themselves like that.”
Yvonne says she feels it’s important to make families feel like they are part of the experience too: “Families have come and taken pictures and they are real proud. I know that heaps of families want to do that but sometimes they don’t necessarily have the resources to be able to.
“We had one girl come in and she asked me ‘Is it OK if my whanau drive down from up North?’ I said, ‘Sure, how many of them are coming?’ She said ten.” (Only four ended up coming, but 10 would have been welcome.)
Yvonne says, in a way, it was her own school-ball which led her on the path to founding The Cinderella Project. Yvonne’s mum went “all out” and got a dress made for her daughter: “I wanted a dress like JLo’s,” laughs Yvonne. The second-oldest girl out of ten siblings, she did her own hair and makeup – as she went onto do for her four younger sisters before their balls, developing her skills as an amateur make-up artist in the process.
And then last year Yvonne found dresses and did the make-up for some of the students she was working with who couldn’t afford to go to the ball. She covered any expenses because, she says, it was important to her that she got them there.
Yvonne is still largely covering any costs out of her own pocket. Most of the donated dresses and shoes were once hers and she says she got “in trouble” for paying to get the returned dresses dry-cleaned out of her own money. Now she asks the girls to pay to get to get them dry-cleaned after the ball. They’re happy to do it: “It’s only $25 opposed to finding hundreds for a dress and shoes.”
Yvonne doubles asa makeup artist and uses her own makeup on the students. That has its own complications. A half Samoan and European girl with lighter skin than Yvonne’s booked in for a makeover: “I told her, ‘Sorry you’re going to have to bring your own foundation’.”
Yvonne’s Affirming Works colleague, Marika Ahsei, helps Yvonne out with the charity and doubles as hairstylist. “It’s great to have her on board,” says Yvonne.
“It’s fun,” says Marika. “It’s fun to be a girl.”
“Sometimes I think we get a bit too excited for the students,” Yvonne laughs.
So far the charity has sent about ten girls to the ball, mainly students from the schools Yvonne works in. Without more volunteers she can’t expand it to other areas in Auckland although she knows the “need is greater”.
Photo: Lena Hesselgrave
If the charity is to grow, Yvonne says she needs to find a way to maintain its integrity and to develop similar relationships with girls as the ones she currently works with.
She has known some of the girls for two years. “There are things that they can’t share with their teachers or their families that they feel comfortable sharing with me and I love that they have someone that they can go to and talk to about those sorts of things.”
One idea is to liaise with school deans, who are likely to know the student’s financial situation at home, to help them “find the right girls”. “Because it’s just brand new and we are learning as we go sometimes we will get students who come along and we know their families are able to [help them out]. We would love to do it as well but it would be way more special doing it for someone who really needs it.”
It’s the middle of ball season at the moment and Yvonne and Marika have got students lined up to be made over until the end of the year. Yvonne is also going to be a guest speaker at Auckland’s Festival for the Future, which will celebrate youth-led Kiwi innovation over a weekend in September.
Some of the girls who have come through The Cinderella Project have gone back to Instagram and Facebook to personally thank the person who donated their dress. One girl posted a video showing her before and after photos.
Holding up the dress she wore, freshly dry-cleaned of course, she says: “Thank you to my fairy godmother Lee I am Cinderella.” Yvonne has posted the video to her Instagram page and a comment from the same student thanks Yvonne for helping her get to the ball: “You are so amazing, I couldn’t of done last night without the help and generosity of you and all the ladies who have donated dresses and shoes. Thank you so so much.”
Yvonne Taufa Falealili will be speaking at Festival of the Future in Auckland next month.
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