Ottawa organization gearing up for Inuit youth

Project North volunteer Jeff Turner was drumming up support for the Gear Up campaign from the organization’s booth at the Northern Lights trade show in Ottawa last weekend. (PHOTO BY SARAH ROGERS)

Project North’s Gear Up campaign lets donors choose which pieces of hockey equipment they’d like to donate.

An Ottawa-area organization hopes to help young Nunavut hockey players gear up in new equipment — one piece at a time.

Project North, which has delivered hockey equipment to nine Nunavut communities since its launch, has started a new fundraising drive that allows people to choose which pieces of gear they’d like to sponsor.

Gear Up! was the brainchild of Laureen Harper, Project North’s honorary chair and wife of Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who was helping volunteers load hockey equipment destined for the North when she suggested that the organization let its donors choose what they’d like to donate.

And so the Gear Up campaign was born, allowing sponsors to choose a hockey bag – or some of its contents – to send North.

“We decided that if we let people buy part of the bag, it would attract more sponsorship,” said Jeff Turner, a Project North volunteer. “It’s real community involvement.”

On the Gear Up website, users can choose between a goalie or a hockey player, and then select from among helmets, shin pads, sticks, skates or other pieces of the equipment to go into the hockey bag.

Sponsors can purchase anything from an entire hockey bag, priced $750, to the least expensive item, a neck guard, for $20.

Once users have selected their gear, they are taken to a map of Nunavut so they can see exactly where the hockey equipment is destined, or see photos or videos of communities where Project North has already sent donations.

And if Laureen Harper’s help has lent a celebrity face to the cause, the campaign’s first donation won’t hurt either: Prime Minister Stephen Harper purchased Gear Up’s first full hockey bag.

Next, Project North plans to visit Qikiqtarjuaq in April 2012. Once the bags reach the North, it’s up to the community to distribute the hockey equipment, Turner said.

So far, nine Nunavut communities have received equipment through Project North, with the help of its sponsors, which include the National Hockey League Players Association and First Air, who ships the gear for free.

Log onto www.projectnorth.ca/gear-up to make a donation.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper purchased Gear Up’s first full hockey bag. Here, the PM surfs Project North’s new website, which allows donors to select which pieces of equipment they’d like to donate. (PHOTO BY MICHELLE VALBERG)