History

Here's the story of the campaign, as told by its founder:

I first got the idea for the purple ribbon campaign when I was in grade nine, attending an inner-city high school in Toronto, Canada. I was fifteen years old, trying desperately to recover from anorexia, and I was rather perturbed by the comments (those directed to me and to others) made by my peers and teachers.

Almost every day, I heard things like,
"Oh, so-and-so is really stupid. You know how stupid? She's even anorexic."
"She's not bulimic - she's not even skinny?"
"What eating disorder? You look just fine."
"How can I get skinny like you?"
"What do you mean? He doesn't have an eating disorder. He's a boy! Boys don't get eating disorders."


I realized throughout high school that my teachers and the other staff at my school - the people who were, in my opinion, supposed to know how to help kids like me, had no idea what to say or do. A guidance counselor told me, when I came to her upset after catching several of my peers throwing up in the school bathroom, that it just wasn't her business. My gym teacher listed weight loss as a main goal for her grade nine girls' gym class; very few of us lost weight during the year, because we were still growing and developing, and the teacher gave some of us rather poor grades. I complained, but she didn't understand. 


By the end of grade nine, I had decided that I would have to do something. Fast forward to 2005. One day in January, I went downtown and bought a length of purple ribbon and a few hundred safety pins. I spent a full evening cutting and pinning my ribbons. The plan was to sell them for a dollar each, and to give the funds to Sheena's Place, an organization in Toronto that has support groups and various resources to help people recover from eating disorders. 

On the first day of eating disorders awareness week, I brought my bag of ribbons to my theatre workshop, where I raised quite a bit of money. Several people donated more than a dollar. I had similar success at school the next week, where I just walked up and down the hallways at lunchtime, asking people to donate a dollar to get a ribbon. By the end of the week, I had $150, and the donations from my family members nearly doubled the amount. 


Seven years later, I haven't looked back. When I moved to London, Ontario to attend university in 2006, I brought the campaign with me. With the help of several volunteers - friends, classmates, and some total strangers - I trolled the university buildings, cafeterias, and residences, garnering support from my floormates and professors. The money from those ribbons went to Hope's Garden, a London organization modeled after Sheena's Place. Friends in Toronto continued selling ribbons here. By that point, the campaign was growing steadily, and I had requests from people in other parts of the country - and the world - to create a "chapter" of the campaign in their cities, towns, and campuses. One of my classmates set up a group on facebook for the campaign. Through the facebook group, she rallied nearly a thousand supporters. I found myself arranging to mail purple ribbons to every corner of the globe.


It turned out that the 2008 campaign didn't exist. In the spring of 2007, I started to relapse, and December of that year saw me entering a treatment centre, where I stayed for several months. For the entire time that I was there, I got letters and emails from people associated with the campaign, all of them asking how they could help out. 


So in 2009, the Purple Ribbon Campaign went worldwide. My sister led a group of students in England to raise several hundred pounds for bEat, and volunteers around the world raised money in Australia, Panama, Korea, and the USA, equalling another several hundred Canadian dollars. Several recovery-oriented organizations benefitted. 


Three years later, I'm trying to incorporate the campaign as its own charity, as explained in the Mission Statement. I joke to my friends that the campaign has started to own my soul - but while it often exhausts me, I wouldn't have it any other way.

In 2011, I dedicated the campaign to the memory of my friend Laura Kaitlyn Peters, who passed away from her eating disorder on March 1st, 2011 at age 20.