A year or so ago, we were part of a Humber College Marketing program project where a class of students did a case study on Zippaport. They gave us a marketing plan and some really great ideas on how to raise the profile of our organization.
One of the super fun ideas was a “Design Your Own Shirt” project. We loved this instantly and began brainstorming how to make it happen. We wanted it to be an event, where packages of shirts and craft supplies were sent out all at once. And September is the perfect month to do that – because it’s Childhood Cancer Awareness Month. We also needed funding – and so when we won the Canada Post Community Foundation Grant, we knew we’d be able to make it happen.
We created the outline of a plan – zipper a ton of white shirts, add a package of fabric markers and send them out to hospitals to distribute to in-patients. Easy peasy, right?
The first thing we did was reach out to all of our hospital contacts and ask if they’d be interested. We needed to know how many shirts would be needed. The response was overwhelmingly positive. In all, we had 15 hospitals respond and over 450 shirts ordered. Wow! In all of 2022 we sent out 1200 shirts, so sending out 500 shirts in one month is a big adjustment for us and requires a lot of organization and volunteers.
Since April we’ve been sewing up a storm. Wayne in Vancouver has sewn a few hundred white shirts. Kristy in Saskatchewan, Michelle and Yvette in Ontario have been sewing up a storm. We’re almost at 450 shirts. Or maybe just over halfway there, with a few weeks before we need to package them up (we’re not panicking yet). We’ve been ordering from H&M, Old Navy and Children’s Place – the shirts are inexpensive and they ship super fast. I often wonder what these retailers think when we place an order for 70 white shirts at a time!
We researched fabric markers to find ones that would be 1. inexpensive and 2. available in large quantities. We reached out to Crayola and learned that they have a donation program. At the time, we didn’t know how many packages we’d need, so we requested 300 packages and they approved us! Within weeks, 3 large boxes of Crayola fabric markers arrived on our doorstep.
One of our followers suggested that tie dying might be a fun activity. We asked hospitals if they’d like some tie dye kits with the shirts, and many of them said yes! We know that kids LOVE tie dying and we cannot wait to see what these shirts look like! We’ve ordered a ton of tie dye kits to be packaged with the shirts. We’re also pre-washing all the shirts so that the tie dye ink sets. We know from experience that brand new shirts repel dye (whoops), so we’re washing 450 shirts before we send them out.
Typically when we send out our shirts, we include a postcard, but there is no Zippaport branding on them (ie no tags or labels that have our logo). But for this project we wanted to make sure that it’s clear these are Zippaport shirts. We found some glittery heat transfer vinyl for the Cricut and have been printing and ironing labels onto each of the shirts. They look amazing. And glittery.
We thought it would be fun to include a colouring/tracing sheet with the shirts – some kids need inspiration and some just love to colour. We were fortunate to have 2 people volunteer to design colouring sheets for us. We’ll print these and include them in the packages. We might also print more to send out with all of our shirts – because who doesn’t love a colouring page?!
Next up is packaging. We’ve ordered boxes and labels and bags. We still need to design and print a postcard and instructions, but there’s lots of time for that, right?
This project has become so much bigger than we originally thought – and it’s incredible. We guessed that maybe 100 shirts would go out, so 450 has spiced things up a bit! Storing all of this material has become a bit of a beast. Zippaport HQ is a small house in Toronto, with 3 kids and not a lot of storage space. So when our friends at Charlie Pickles offered us some shelves in their warehouse, it was a game changer. We’ve loaded our supplies and our house feels a lot bigger now, ha.
We’re still a few weeks away from packaging up shirts. We’re thinking that a packaging party might be fun – some friends, some highschool volunteers who need hours should be able to fold and package everything up in a few hours or so.
We are so excited for this project. It’s a ton of work, but for kids to have something fun to do while at hospital makes it all worth it. If you want to support our project, email us at info@zippaport.ca or donate here. We’ll take all of the help we can get!
~Julie
Here’s the list of hospitals that will be participating:
- Centenary Hospital – Toronto
- Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario (CHEO) – Ottawa
- Children’s Hospital of Winnipeg
- Credit Valley Hospital – Mississauga
- Health Science North – Sudbury
- IWK – Halifax
- Janeway Children’s Hospital – St John’s
- Jim Pattison Children’s Hospital – Saskatoon
- Kingston Health Sciences
- McMaster Children’s Hospital – Hamiton
- Montreal Children’s Hospital – Montreal
- Sickkids – Toronto
- Soldiers Memorial Hospital – Orillia
- Southlake Regional Health Centre – Newmarket
- Stollery Children’s Hospital – Edmonton