BOW VALLEY — When Canmore’s Laura Hughes heard about the social isolation and missed school days that a lack of access to bras can have on young girls in Honduras, she knew she had to stir up support back home.
Calling on the Bow Valley, Hughes is collecting lightly used bras to take with her to The Bay Islands in Honduras where good quality bras and underwear are often tough to find.
“They don’t have a lot of resources down there, like there’s not much for stores or anything and what they can get is really low quality and then also poverty is a major issue,” said Hughes.
“People are very much just trying to survive, and bras and underwear can be considered luxury in that situation.”
Making the trip to the island community since 2011 for her work with a Canadian environmental non-profit, Hughes recently received a text from her contact in the area, a town councillor involved with a local children’s charity.
“She said that she was doing a clothing drive with a bunch of kids and one of the girls was standing off to the back and not talking to anyone,” said Hughes.
Asking if she was OK, Hughes’ contact learned that the teen girl didn’t own any underwear or bras.
“She was wearing shorts under her skirt, and she thought if she stood far enough away that the other kids might not realize, and then it came out that she didn’t have a bra either and she was just really embarrassed, and she’d been staying home from school because of it,” she added.
The story was enough to move Hughes to action and start an initiative that would uplift girls in the community.
“There’s an enormous amount of data that shows that girls going to school is the biggest indicator of how their quality of life will turn out through adulthood and if they’re staying home from school because of underwear, if we bring underwear to them, they’ll go to school and can have a far more successful future and far more opportunities,” Hughes said, noting that her donation is verified through a local girl’s charity in the area.
“If it’s that simple of a fix, we gotta go for it.”
Receiving over 100 bras so far, Hughes is also taking new underwear of any size for both children and teen boys and girls.
While she is looking primarily for sports bras because of the flexible sizing, Hughes will take any size and any kind of bra “that’s good quality and lightly used.”
With one suitcase already full, Hughes says she hopes to continue the initiative annually.
“If I’m so lucky to have a problem that we have too many, I’ll bring them down on my next trip, if I have more than two suitcases, but I’m thinking I could probably take a couple 100 more,” she said.
Leaving for Honduras in early April, Hughes says donations can be dropped off at Blondies Cafe in Canmore or Smartwool in Banff until the end of March.
The Local Journalism Initiative is funded by the Government of Canada. This position covers Îyârhe (Stoney) Nakoda First Nation and Kananaskis Country.
By Leah Pelletier, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
Original Published on Mar 23, 2026 at 08:31
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