#MaskUpUVic

A collaborative, student-led public health campaign.

Introduction

The #MaskUpUVic campaign is a collaborative, student-led public health campaign to help keep the University of Victoria (UVic) community safe with free N95-equivalent masks and COVID-19 rapid tests.

It is organized in collaboration with The Canadian Red Cross, which supplies us with free respirators and tests, and several UVic student organizations:

After the province and university lifted their mask mandates with little warning in spring 2022, masking rates on campus dropped from nearly 100% to under 20%. Many students recognized a need to continue promoting masks and other infectious disease prevention practices on campus. We had hoped that distributing free, high-quality masks along with information on their importance would improve masking rates in classes.

In summer 2022, I learned about The Canadian Red Cross's community mask and test program, which supplies free N95-equivalent masks and COVID-19 rapid tests to registered non-profits and charities. I reached out to UVSS to see if they could apply for the program if I figured out how to store and distribute them. All of the student organizations and several individual volunteers helped with distribution at events and from a central pick-up point on campus. This campaign came together very quickly: it was just 2 weeks from our first meeting to our first distribution event.

As of January 2023, about 5 months since the campaign started, we have reached:

276 Instagram followers
54 Discord members
6120 KN95 masks distributed
756 COVID-19 rapid tests distributed

Some of my specific contributions to the campaign are described below.

Project management

I coordinated many aspects of the campaign using tools like Trello and Discord.

Logo design

I created the #MaskUpUVic logo (a smiley face wearing a face mask surrounded by the text '#MaskUpUVic') in several colour, size, and format variations, as well as some basic brand guidelines.

I designed and coordinated the production and payment for #MaskUpUVic logo stickers in a variety of colour variations to reflect the diversity of our community. These stickers were distributed along with our masks and tests.