An evening of fashion and homemade desserts is coming to Fall River this Friday, as the Ubuntu Grannies gear up for their annual spring event. The fundraiser, featuring a fashion show and dessert service, aims to support grandmothers in Africa who are raising children orphaned by AIDS.
The event will take place on Friday, June 6 from 7 to 9 p.m. at St. John’s United Church, located at 3360 Highway. Tickets are $20 and include access to the fashion show, along with tea and a selection of homemade desserts.
The show will spotlight pieces from Rosebank Boutique, a local store on Hammonds Plains Road.
Store owner Danielle Fralic has previously worked with the St. Margaret’s Bay Grandmothers. “I am familiar with the cause and what they stand for,” she said.
Tears well up in her eyes as she expresses the importance of community. “Sometimes I wish I could do more to support the cause.” Family is everything for Fralic as she and her daughters run the business—and will also walk in the show—and her granddaughters occasionally run the store. “I am a grandmother of three, so helping other grandmothers is dear to me,” she said.
“Supporting a cause that transcends borders is so important,” Fralic says, adding, “because everything has an impact, and helps the society.” She believes that, especially with all that is happening in the world, “we need more people doing good for others just to do good.”
“We host a couple of events a year to send support to the grandmothers in Africa,” said Sherry Fownes, a longtime volunteer with the Stephen Lewis Foundation, which runs the Grandmothers to Grandmothers campaign. “These are for the grandmothers in Africa looking after their grandchildren, whose parents have died from AIDS.”
Fownes, a retired healthcare and product sales professional, has been volunteering with the foundation for over 15 years. “I had just retired, and one of my best friends was with them—and then I joined too,” she said.
The Ubuntu Grannies are part of a Canada-wide grassroots movement. All proceeds from the spring event go directly to the Stephen Lewis Foundation’s Grandmothers campaign, providing critical resources for African women who have taken on caregiving roles in the face of losing their children to AIDS.
Teasing what is on the menu at the fashion show, Fownes says, “we are serving homemade desserts and tea at the event, all made by us in our kitchens.” To further prompt people to have conversations and mingle throughout, “we have tables for four,” she said.
In an age of people being connected to their phones, they hope that this intimate seating style will force people to talk, build community and build in-person relations.
Fownes’ granddaughter, Kayleigh Bogart, a professional model and an international development student, will also be walking in the show. “The idea that family is very important. Supporting the Stephen Lewis Foundation is important, and helping my grandmother help grandmothers,“ Bogart says, are the reasons why she is volunteering her time and skills at this show.
“I consider myself very lucky to have a family in Halifax, and my grandmother has always supported me, and I feel privileged to support her.”
Bogart said that AIDS is still a very taboo subject, and supporting that and talking about it in a community-based setting and space is great. She added that, “living in Canada is a huge privilege, and supporting the grandmothers in Africa in a very horizontal capacity by asking them where they need help, and then trying to provide that help is special.”
This article appears in Jun 1-30, 2025.
