Pasadena Teenager Starts Donation Drive to Help Girls Affected by California Wildfires

A few miles from the rubble left behind by the Eaton fire, a Los Angeles art studio grew densely packed over the weekend with the supplies a teenage girl might need to start over.

Sports bras and graphic T-shirts dangled from hangers. Converse sneakers were arrayed by size on the concrete floor. Clear plastic bins overflowed with deodorant, hair products and pastel pimple patches.

All of the items collected in the airy warehouse in the Boyle Heights neighborhood were free to teenagers whose homes had been incinerated in the city’s devastating wildfires.

While many relief efforts for victims of the fires have focused on more acute needs like shelter and food, Avery Colvert, an eighth grader in Pasadena, started a donation drive called Altadena Girls last week with a slightly less obvious remit. She wanted to offer young women essentials they had lost, plus some of the everyday luxuries that might help restore a touch of normalcy to their lives.

Cristina Soltero spent more than two hours on Monday browsing with her 13-year-old niece, Mila, whose home in Altadena had been reduced to ash by the Eaton fire. The pajamas Mila had been wearing when her family evacuated were the only clothing she had left. Her budding record collection was destroyed.

“It really just demolished her spirit,” said Ms. Soltero, 41, a nurse.

While her parents searched for housing, Mila filled two Ikea bags with socks, hair ties and a Brandy Melville cardigan. She lit up when she discovered a dusty pink Stanley cup similar to the one she had left behind, her aunt said.

“It was so difficult to not cry the entire time, because she was so happy,” Ms. Soltero said. “For a minute, she was just normal, shopping, not thinking about her loss.”

Ms. Colvert, 14, created the Altadena Girls Instagram account on Friday with the help of her stepfather. Her house was spared, but many of her friends’ were not, she said in an interview with Time magazine. Her middle school, Eliot Arts Magnet, burned down.

She posted a call on social media for new clothing, hygiene and beauty products, specifying the kinds of items that she thought would be deeply appreciated by teenage girls once they had secured food and shelter.

“I started hearing from my friends about the stuff that they desperately needed, but were either afraid or ashamed to ask for,” Ms. Colvert wrote in an email. “Girl stuff. Teen girl stuff. Everything from bras and underwear to makeup and stuff to just make them feel like themselves.”

The initiative quickly attracted high-profile support. Charli XCX called the organization “the coolest” on social media. Shipments of donated products arrived from Ariana Grande’s makeup brand, R.E.M. Beauty. Prince Harry and Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, made a donation through their charitable foundation.

Altadena Girls said it was setting up a new location in Pasadena to bring supplies closer to those affected by the wildfires. By Tuesday, an initiative inspired by the group had popped up to support teenage boys.

Once Ashleeta Beauchamp, 35, determined she did not need to evacuate from her home in Sherman Oaks, she posted on Instagram that she was planning to make a delivery of hair care products for Black women to Altadena Girls.

Her followers sent her around $800 to help purchase leave-in conditioner, moisturizing shampoo, bonnets, edge gel and wide-tooth combs. Ms. Beauchamp loaded up a cart at Target on Saturday with several of the products she uses on her own hair.

“I want to make sure that everyone is taken care of, especially because the Black community was impacted so hard in Altadena,” said Ms. Beauchamp, who works in finance for the film industry and grew up nearby in La Crescenta.

When she delivered the products to the studio space in Boyle Heights, she was cheered to see how many people were there dropping off donations and serving as volunteer stylists. She hoped their efforts would provide a moment of comfort to the young women whose lives had been upended.

“Those kids have already been through enough,” she said.