Three friends from St. Gabriel the Archangel Catholic School are hoping to pay for their Grade 8 Ottawa trip with a little creativity and hard work.
The Barrie trio of Cayden Segura, Adam Harris-Hunwicks and Lucas Flammia, all 13 years old, are getting ready for the exciting annual trip that grade eight students take in May and while the school is providing a fundraiser to assist, the friends have taken matters into their own hands.
Segura got the idea from his parents to create a shirt design that his peers would want to wear and Dyvrse was born.
“My parents gave me the idea, but I didn't want to do it alone, so I talked to Adam and Lucas because we’re friends,”said Segura. “We chose Dyvrse because it means to be different and that’s what we want to do, stand out from the rest and be ourselves.”
The idea for the name came up in a conversation one night when the friends were chatting and they decided to head to Creative Bean coffee shop and hash out the details.
While they figured out the name pretty easily it took a little longer to create the logo, which is where Segura’s mom came in handy as he says she “is pretty good with graphic design and helped me play with the basic design we had first.”
The trip is approximately $600 and the school does have a fundraising campaign where the students sell pre-ordered meat, but Harris-Hunwicks says they didn’t want to do that and again wanted to be different and branch out on their own.
“I don’t personally know of anyone else doing their own fundraising except for selling the meat but we just really wanted to work together and try our own thing,” said Harris-Hunwicks. “I think it's important for people, especially teenagers to make their own way or at least try.”
While the boys would like to eventually incorporate hats and toques, right now they are focused on selling their T-shirts for $20 and sweaters for $35.
Flammia is happy that everyone has been helpful, including people at school.
“Everybody has been very supportive and our teachers and friends have wanted a shirt from us, which is really cool to know we’re selling them already,” said Flammia. “It's pretty cool because at our age you don’t really start a brand so who knows what could come of it.”
The boys have sold approximately 40 shirts and sweaters over the last two weeks and while they have sold mainly to friends, family and folks at the school, they hope others in town will see the clothing and want to help build a local brand that is possibly on the rise.
“We would really like it to be a clothing line but we’re focused right now on mainly just paying of the trip first and seeing what we have left over to maybe keep this going,” said Segura.
Harris-Hunwicks agreed adding that the boys may also look at “any extra money that we make that isn’t needed for the Ottawa trip could be donated to some kind of charity.”
Flammia pushes the fact that they have remembered so far the importance of staying grounded and why it started.
“I really like that we’re close friends who have been able to create something like this and focus on a goal that we all have and that we are trying to get to Ottawa on our own,” said Flammia. “It might inspire other kids in other Grade 8 classes to do the same thing.”
Anyone interested in helping the teens on their quest to raise their own money for the Grade 8 trip to Ottawa can go to www.paramedicnatsmentalhealthjourney.com or their Instagram account @dyvrse.brand to place their orders.
