34 Stitches

34 Stitches uses art as a bridge to connect and provide a Safe Place for young people to share their story - in order to encourage and present hope.

Our nightmare began two days after Christmas when we saw two drops of blood on my parents’ bathroom sink. After addiction took my little brother’s life, we wanted to help others - but didn’t know what that meant… I shared our story at a treatment center and kept going back to hang-out and heal. Through art therapy, one of the guys drew a design on a piece of fabric which read “psych ward.” He asked me to sew it on his jacket and this led to sharing your story on a hat. This is where helping people find healing, on a simple piece of canvas, began.
Sharing the hard parts of our story lifts the burden of feeling alone. The walls come down and young people design and express their most heavy thoughts. Their designs are packed with messaging - a guide for how they need to be encouraged, supported, and loved.
We host events to help young people in youth programs (i.e. Boys & Girls Clubs and Champions), schools, foster care, children’s hospital, sports teams, Girls Scouts, youth camps, Orange County Rescue Mission, homeless communities, and community events.

We’ve been hosting self-funded events for the past ~6 years prior to receiving our 501(c)(3) approval in 2023.

Major Achievements include:
1) Relationship building with select Boys & Girls Clubs throughout Southern California. We currently can’t financially supply the demand. Our 2024 goal is to provide 21,000 units (hats) which is approximately $108,150 at ~$5.15/hat. We could easily surpass this unit goal, to over 80,000, when we receive financial support.
2) Having a Social Impact within our local community by partnering with individuals, groups, companies, and those needing community service hours, to assist in the fulfillment and shipping of the hats to the events. This brings our community close together to help others and significantly reduces the cost of the hats.
3) Strengthening relationships with our suppliers to help lower the cost of the hats and provide a streamlined turn time of 25,000+ units within 3-5 days.

Major Goals include:
1) Continue building relationships with different youth organizations as we begin to offer events out of state.
2) Increase our Social Impact by adding multiple locations for our fulfillment center, within our community. Pulling our community together, so as a team, we can help others in a big way!
3) Provide a safe place for our community to share their stories.

1) Financing – increase donor support.
2) Continue to collaborate with Select Boys & Girls Clubs as we develop mental health tools and curriculum to help young people engage and present hope.
3) Prepare and implement unique methods for our community, and other communities, so they can have fun and play a part in raising funds on the social media platforms.
4) Grow volunteer support, within our community, in our fulfillment center(s).
5) Continue to connect with individuals that can offer their talents in the overall market strategy for 34 Stitches.

Los Angeles, Riverside, San Bernardino, San Diego and Orange Counties.
Eager to cover the USA!

I am blown-away by the support of the people in the Orange County community. They are offering business strategies to help position 34 Stitches to be able to offer hats to more young people. Their talents and passion to help young people find healing is good stuff. What a great display of people helping people!