Children's programs at Walpole Island First Nation are getting a $10,000 boost thanks to a couple of hundred pairs of leggings and a lot of hard work by a Wallaceburg business owner.
Adrienne Sloan of Wallaceburg owns Lavish Leggings and started selling 'Every Child Matters' leggings in June.
Sloan said she and her close friend Brandie Lucier had previously worked together on the designs. Lucier is a member of Walpole Island First Nation and the pair were planning to create legging patterns that represent the different clans on Walpole Island.
According to Sloan, it was around that time that the remains of over 200 Indigenous children were found in an unmarked, undocumented burial site at a former residential school in Kamloops, B.C.
"I called up my friend and said 'I had no idea that this even existed or this even happened,'" said Sloan.
After the news came out about the unmarked graves, Lucier, whose grandfather was a survivor of a residential school, created an Every Child Matters design for leggings. The two friends decided to make a fundraiser out of it with $10 from every pair of leggings sold going to benefit children's programs on Walpole Island.
"I was going to put it into my order and [Brandie] said 'I think you need to take preorders and you're underestimating how big this could be.' So we started off with preorders and it sold over 100 different orders overnight pretty much," Sloan said. "It blew up from there."
Before long, Sloan, who only just started her business in February through Facebook, went from selling a couple of pairs of leggings a week to hundreds.
"Even at 3 o'clock in the morning, I would get messages of people wanting to pre-order a pair," she said. "I was having a hard time even keeping up with billing people. I have to enter it all in by hand."
Sloan said her original hope was to raise $5,000. However, as orders grew, so did her goal.
To help raise more money, Sloan teamed up with a competitor in Sarnia who also agreed to sell the leggings. She started selling Every Child Matters face masks and t-shirt, too.
"There were a lot of people that liked our design," said Sloan. "So, we started producing different colour shirts. Then I had people start asking me about masks. We made I think 200 masks in two days."
Through the sales, a total of $10,000 was raised with the money going towards Indigenous Children’s programs and education on Walpole Island. Sloan and Lucier presented Walpole Island First Nation Chief Charles Sampson with a cheque on Wednesday.
"I think the chief was shocked by how much we raised...I think that he thought maybe [we'd raise] a couple of thousands. Then when it was [10,000,] he was very shocked and we were happy about that, too," she said.
The cheque presentation also coincided with the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, which was made a federal statutory holiday earlier this year and recognized for the first time on Thursday.