Is it rude or just cynical to say when I first heard about
Haligonian David Nurse’s business idea to sell anti-bullying t-shirts
to raise cash for Kids Help Phone I thought it was a bad idea?
In any case, I did.
Of course I’m no fan of bullying. And I’m all for the good work of
the Kids Help Phone, which in Nova Scotia alone answers questions and
provides support more than 100,000 times every year.
But the business model Nurse is working—selling hoodies to change
the world—has always given me the willies. There’s just something
sinister about the intersection of commerce and pushing social
change—yes, it’s how Lance Armstrong, with his yellow silicone
Livestrong bracelets, raised millions for cancer research, but it’s
also how Lance Armstrong raised the profile of, well, Lance
Armstrong.
David Nurse? He’s not a professional athlete. The trim 35-year-old
is a lawyer with the Nova Scotia Department of Justice; just a guy
struck with an idea one day last April while driving around in his car
who thought, “I have a little extra time to put this together.”
By November, Nurse had partnered with Kids Help Phone and launched
the web-only store for his new company, Endbullying Apparel.
The site—endbullying.ca—sells t-shirts, tank-tops, hoodies and
stickers with the Shannon Bell-designed “endbullying” logo. “A
significant portion of what would otherwise be profit—it’s about 60
percent—goes to Kids Help Phone.” That’s $5 a pop for clothing items
and $2 for stickers (the stickers are currently sold out). And Nurse
gets a little of the money, too.
Nurse comes by his desire to make change for young people
honestly—his mother worked in child protection and his dad for the
IWK. “I guess I’ve always been aware of the issues,” he says.
He credits a lot of his inspiration to Travis Price and David
Shepherd—the guys behind the Central Kings Rural High events that
spawned the now province-wide anti-bullying Pink Day, celebrated in
September. (There’s now one in British Columbia, too.)
Nurse’s personal connection to bullying? It’s not what you might
think.
Nurse isn’t the schoolyard bully-made-good. And he wasn’t bullied as
a kid, either, at least not in a “debilitating” sense. But, he says, “I
think everyone has experienced bullying.”
Nurse says it happens all the time.
“When I was in law school I saw bullying of university students by
university students. You know, people who had chosen to go to
this academic institution, to learn.
“I see it as an adult in the workplace,” he says, “and as an adult
in social situations.”
That pervasiveness is a driver in Nurse’s vision of making his
endbullying t-shirts make money for charity, but also make a change in
people’s attitudes. (The short version: that “mutual respect is
mandatory.”)
Nurse has an interesting idea about why bullying happens as much as
it does and in so many social arenas.
“Bullying,” he says, “is a kind of form of aggression that’s not
associated with any particular sort of other kind of
discrimination or attack.”
Huh?
“We’ve done a lot of education around homophobia and racism. It’s
not acceptable to target people on those grounds. But we still have a
lot of people who are targeted for some perception of difference or
isolation.”
He’s got a point.
Nurse is sponsoring an anti-bullying booth at a school fair in
Yellowknife this week (“which pretty much wipes out any profit,” he
chuckles) and trying to plan a day-long event at a local coffee shop
where a portion of profits goes to Kids Help Phone. He’s also looking
to introduce new designs to the Endbullying Apparel lineup and,
significantly, he’s just told Kids Help Phone the first chunk of money
from his project is on the way.
And what about cynics who don’t think you can change the world
selling t-shirts?
Nurse is unrepentant. “Finding a way for people to easily and
publicly support the movement in their day-to-day life,” he says,
“really helps.”
Buying and wearing an endbullying t-shirt, Nurse says, can be a
concrete way of helping reach an “intangible goal,” like changing
people’s minds about what behaviour is kosher in the classroom and
schoolyard, but also in the bar and by the watercooler.
And buying products to advance awareness around social change
doesn’t just apply to bullying. It “was the beauty of the Livestrong
bracelet,” too, Nurse says.
Hmm. Turns out selling t-shirts may be a way to actually change the
world after all.
Can product placement save the world? Tell Lezlie
Lowe what you think, at lezliel@thecoast.ca.
This article appears in Mar 12-18, 2009.