By Michelle Kim

When Megan Mullaney looks at old dance clothes, she doesn’t see space-filling closet deadweight, but rather an opportunity for little girls in tough situations to feel like princesses for a moment.

For the past year, Mullaney, 17, has been running Project Princess out of her home, collecting donated dance clothes to give to girls dealing with HIV, AIDS, domestic violence, sexual assault and other tough situations as a way to lift their spirits and bring a little fun into their lives.

The Bishop Brady High School senior started Project Princess when she interned last summer at the Greater Manchester AIDS Project.

“My little sister and I always really enjoyed dressing up. I always took for granted that I had all this stuff,” said Mullaney, who took dance lessons throughout her life and accumulated a closet full of old costumes and dance outfits.

“I became close to one little 2-year-old girl. She didn’t have any dress up clothes, so I put together a bag for her,” said Mullaney. “I put together more bags and it spread from there.”

Mullaney, a Dunbarton resident, received donated costumes from friends and national dancewear companies.

Creating and assembling bags is definitely a family affair, said Mullaney.

She described how her grandmother, Beverly Mullaney, makes pillowcase-sized bags out of fun-looking colorful cloth. Mullaney’s mother, Kathleen Murray, helps sort through boxes of costumes. The bags are filled with the donated costumes according to size, which range all the way up to adult sizes. Each bag is given a tiara and, if she has the extra budget for it, a ballet slipper.

So far, Mullaney’s Project Princess bags have been donated to the Greater Manchester AIDS Project (GMAP), New Hampshire Coalition Against Domestic Sexual Violence, a school in Maine, and she is looking at sending them to the Children’s Hospital at Dartmouth. With the help of her boss from GMAP, she’s also looking at the possibility of sending some bags to places in Africa, like Zimbabwe.

“I have so much more, it’s just finding the people to give them to,” said Mullaney.

She said she’ll be able to meet some of the GMAP girls who’ve received the Project Princess bags at a dress-up tea party the organization is holding.

Mullaney described talking with some of the parents of the girls and being touched as some of them cried when they told her how having the costumes had affected their daughters.

Although Mullaney is applying for college for next year – University of New Hampshire is her first choice – she said she plans to continue the project “as long as there is someone to give them to.”