BY AMANDA MARKOWITZ
Published November 15, 2006
There's a new trend on campus.
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Shirts with the slogan Save Our Women, with a pink ribbon in place of the "a," are becoming a hot commodity.
The American Apparel-made shirts go for $20, half goes to battle breast cancer.
LSA freshman Samantha Kelman started selling the T-shirts when she was a senior in high school. It wasn't until she got to Ann Arbor, though, that her nonprofit business took off.
Kelman said her campaign has sold close to 400 shirts and raised about $7,000.
Kelman said her grandmother, who died of breast cancer, inspired her to sell the shirts.
Ever since she has been old enough to participate, Kelman has walked with her mother in the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer 3-Day in honor of her grandmother. The 3-Day is an event in which participants walk 60 miles from one city to another, sleeping in tents at night. Each volunteer must raise $2,100 in order to participate in the walk.
When she was 17, Kelman designed T-shirts and sold them to family and friends to raise money for the walk.
Kelman's busy schedule at the University will prevent her from participating in the walk this year, but it hasn't stopped her from doing her part to fight breast cancer.
This spring, Kelman started a Facebook.com group to expand the sale of shirts to students on campus. She worked with Mara Sofferin, a student at McGill University in Canada, to continue to sell shirts and raise awareness about breast cancer.
They designed the Facebook group to allow students on the Michigan and McGill campuses to order shirts online and pick them up in person.
The next step was reaching students beyond their own campuses, so they started saveourwomenshirts.com.
"The website was put up October 26th, and we got two orders that first day," Kelman said.
The T-shirts come in three styles for women and two styles for men.
Proceeds go directly to the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation and the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation.
The website, as well as a mass e-mail sent out to the University Greek community has caused orders to skyrocket, Kelman said.
