Crafts4Charity raises $894 for hospital from spring crafts market

UW’s Crafts4Charity club wrapped up the spring term having raised a total of $894 from the Creators Market, continuing a termly tradition of showcasing local creators while contributing to a good cause.

The club is set to donate the money to the Hospital Elder Life Program (HELP), a volunteer-driven initiative at the Waterloo Region Health Network (WRHN). (WRHN was formerly known separately as the Grand River Hospital and St. Mary’s Hospital.) This term’s amount is set to be larger than the previous term’s amount of $859 from the winter term, donated to Spectrum, Waterloo Region’s Rainbow Community Space supporting the local 2SLGBTQIA+ community.

The club’s signature event last term featured about 40 local vendors, including both UW and non UW creators. The market showcased a diverse range of merchandise and handmade crafts, including tote bags, keychains, tarot deck pouches, and custom keyboard caps.

Third year medicinal chemistry student Stephanie Hammond was selling her plushies at the market while on co-op this term. While her first market was the Crafts4Charity club’s creator market in April 2023, she had been making her stuffed goodies for many years. “I think I started making them around seventh grade when I found a YouTube video on how to make a plushie out of a sock, and I thought it was really cute, so I tried to make it, and then I kinda got addicted to it,” she said. “Throughout the pandemic, I would make stuff as gifts for friends.”

For students like Hammond who have crafty hobbies coming into university, balancing time for them along with coursework and the co-op search can be challenging. “I used to do a lot of art in high school, but I started doing it less once I started focusing more on my studies,” club co-president Ipsa Barot said in an interview with Imprint. “Joining this club let me enjoy that hobby more.” Outside of the markets, Crafts4Charity also hosts low-cost paid craft workshops throughout each term. These events are open to all students regardless of previous experience with crafting, serving both as a social event and an integrated opportunity for students to take time to relax while doing something fun.

“As a club, we try to inspire students to stay creative… we want to give back to our community while also engaging the student body to have a creative outlet, and have something fun to do outside of school,” Barot added. “We want to make art and creativity very accessible and not intimidating for everyone, as well as letting people take time to be creative.”

The other co-president, Health Sciences student Ecaterina Rosu, hopes the club also reduces barriers for students who want to support a good cause, stating, “It’s often choosing between that, and treating oneself or the money going towards living expenses… It can be very stressful a lot of the time, especially at UW.”

By holding markets and other low-cost craft workshops, the club integrates opportunities for students to support local charities and creators with being able to buy or make fun trinkets. And aside from market customers, Rosu adds that the club also tries to keep barriers low for sellers by only charging a small fee of $12 a day for booths rather than a percentage of sales. “You don’t have to over-commit more money…[if] you make an especially good sale, you’re not losing out on the money that you earn,” she stated. “What I’ve heard from vendors is that they can get that back with one or two sales, and because of the traffic we get at the market, usually people are able to get many more sales than they expected to.”

As for choosing the charity that will receive the proceeds from event fees, the club usually decides based on member recommendations and interests. Rosu, a recipient of the Hallman Undergraduate Research Fellowship, is also a volunteer at the HELP program supported by the Spring term’s market, which provides engagement and promotes independence for senior inpatients at WRHN through activities like exercise programs. The initiative works to reduce the rate of dementia and delirium in older patients through involving volunteers directly in patient care, which Rosu personally resonates with as it ties into her research interests on investigating relationships between patients and healthcare providers. Rosu’s interest, in turn, came from her personal experience seeing vaccine hesitancy and distrust of healthcare providers in patients from Romania, where her family is from.

“The reason why I’m doing this research is because I want to see if there’s any way we can improve our health promotion and education towards those populations here in Canada,” Rosu said. “… The way that Crafts4Charity connected to that and my interests… I really like that this club is very down-to-earth; it’s working to improve communities, not only involving students but also involving local charities.” Organizations supported by previous donations include the Trevor Project, SPECTRUM, and SickKids. Crafts4Charity requires that the recipient organizations of club donations be officially registered in Canada, to ensure credibility and transparency. “We want people to know that the money is going somewhere where it will actually make a difference,” Rosu clarified.

As the fall term begins and students head back to school, Crafts4Charity and the students who come to the markets time and time again are a reminder to engage in fun and hands-on creativity. Rosu spoke from her personal experience as a volunteer that “leisure is one of the most important things for maintaining health. People usually recommend leisure after they have already become sick, but leisure is also, in some sense, a luxury. I think it’s important for people to try to [stay] balanced if they can, even when it’s really, really hard to.“

To students who are creatives and creators, Cailyn Perry, a former executive of the club, emphasizes the importance of sticking to your own path even when feeling unsupported by those around you. “A lot of people are going to have opinions on what you should and shouldn’t do, but really, the only way to make your business work is to do things that speak to you,” Perry said at the Spring term market. She started selling her work as an undergraduate student and now continues to run her business as a current graduate student in biology. “Your audience will find you. There will always be people who come by and just click and get what you’re doing. That means everything. Just wait for those people to find you.”

More information on Crafts4Charity club can be found on their Instagram account at @uw.crafts4charity. Information on the HELP Program at WRHN can be found on their page.

UW’s Crafts4Charity clubs’ creators market last term. (Photo credit: Angela Li)