Hi! My name is Julie and I am the founder of Zippaport.
If you poke around our website, you can read about how we got started (coles notes: my daughter, Sadie, was diagnosed with Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia and we started making shirts to help other kids with their port access). While many people make Zippaport happen (sewing volunteers, PR volunteers, webmasters, marketing gurus and more), I am the one behind the social media posts, mailing out shirts, coordinating the zippering (and also zippering when I have time) and more.
I thought it would be great to start a blog to keep you up to date with some of the behind the scenes activities happening at Zippaport HQ (more in depth than what we share on social media) and document our story (because this is truly just the beginning).
For the first post, rather than retell the story that we’ve already shared on our site, I thought this would be a great opportunity to share an update on where we are and where we’re going (without taking content away from future blog posts).
So, it’s January 2022…where are we? We had the most successful holiday shirt drive, where we collected 338 shirts and $4,400 in cash donations. This is so incredible! We’re now in the process of zippering all of these shirts (note: future blog post – our amazing volunteers) and finding somewhere to store them (we live in a tiny semi in Toronto with 3 kids…storage is limited but we’re figuring it out).
We are a little overwhelmed with online school and a small reno project that we’ve just completed (which will give us a ton more storage in our tiny house), so social media posts have been sporadic, orders are being filled a bit more slowly than usual and we haven’t had a chance to prep many shirts for zippering. But, as sports are shut down and the reno project is finishing, we’re looking forward to getting the ball rolling on some new initiatives.
Where are we going? Firstly, this blog is a big step. We were fortunate to be chosen by Humber College a few months ago to be the subject of a Public Relations project: Zippaport was the subject of a group project where 3 groups of students study us and presented us with a 12 month PR plan. They had some pretty great insights, one of which was to create a blog. We have some great ideas, but would love some help with writing. If you are a parent who has received a Zippaport shirt, or work with kids with cancer or have an idea on a blog post we’d love to hear from you. It could be a great way to tell your story and share your ideas. If you’d like to be a guest contributor, drop us a line at info@zippaport.ca
Next, we would love some more media coverage. We have a wonderful volunteer PR manager who is working on getting our name out across the country (not just in the GTA). If you have any media contacts, please email us!
One of the takeaways from the PR project was an idea for a design your own Zippaport shirt event. The idea would be to send kits to pediatric hospitals across the country, with blank zippered shirts and supplies for kids to make their own port shirt. Timing and coordination all need to be figured out, but we think it could be fun!
Finally, we have some more hospitals to connect with (specifically CHEO, BC Children’s Hospital, and some Ontario POGO satellites), some updates/adjustments to our website and work to do on LinkedIn and TikTok.
So that’s what’s on our brain right now.
~julie