Jessica Baird, founder of The Sock Project, raises awareness for chronic illnesses by sending colourful pairs of socks to people with autoimmune disorders, as well as to their friends and relatives.
After graduating from Carleton University with a bachelor of arts in child and youth studies in 2011, Baird’s passion for education led her to a job as an elementary school teacher. But in 2017, Baird took a one-year medical leave from her job after being diagnosed with ankylosing spondylitis, an autoimmune disease that progressively causes the bones of the spine to fuse.
Many friends and family members wanted to know how to help Baird after her diagnosis. Then a friend suggested: “go to the store and get yourself one pair of fun silly socks and wear them to all your medical appointments, just to emotionally get you through.”
Baird then took to social media asking people to send in fun pairs of socks as part of a challenge. She wanted to have a different pair for each day of the year.
The response was overwhelming and Baird said she was suddenly receiving thousands of socks from family, friends, strangers and companies.
In the last five years, Baird said she’s received about 15,000 pairs of socks, and she sent 13,000 of them worldwide to other patients with autoimmune disorders as part of The Sock Project. She included personal notes of encouragement alongside 130 of the pairs.
As The Sock Project’s founder, social media manager and outreach manager, Baird has made many connections within the autoimmune community.
“There are the connections and the relations that I’m developing with people every day,” she said. “That’s a lot of love and people out there who want to be supportive and appreciative of who I am.”
One of those connections is with the Britannia Bakeshop, which hosted a pop-up event for The Sock Project. After hearing about Baird’s project, Gisele Paquette, owner of the Britannia Bakeshop, said she wanted to help right away.
“We had hoped to help Jessica bring attention to her project as well as do a bit to financially support the project,” Paquette said.
Paquette offered the space in front of her bakeshop for the one-day event filled with raffles, prizes, sock-shaped sugar cookies and sales of Baird’s book, The Socks—a fictional children’s tale loosely based on The Sock Project.
While working in the Britannia Bakeshop, Sugar Tarts Bakery designed and sold sugar cookies in fun sock patterns, donating all profits to The Sock Project.
“[Baird is] bubbly, enthusiastic and well-informed,” Paquette said. “It was an absolute pleasure working with her [because] she was so gracious for our support which made us feel like a million bucks.”
Baird said these connections and relationships are constant for her. Outside a Farm Boy in Westboro in May 2021, she met a fellow Carleton alumna, Brittany Silver, and the pair instantly bonded over The Sock Project.
“I was outside talking about my recent diagnosis and [Baird] happened to be standing next to me,” Silver said as she recalled their first time meeting. “She actually gave me some socks from her bag right there, completely by chance.”
Silver said her diagnosis with psoriatic arthritis, a type of arthritis that affects the skin and nails, left her feeling very vulnerable and with nowhere to turn until she met Baird.
“She opened the opportunity for me to learn more and get in touch with other people with similar autoimmune diseases and that was super helpful for me because I learned that I’m not alone,” Silver said.
In addition to The Sock Project, Baird currently runs workshops for teachers and students about autoimmune diseases in the Faculty of Education at the University of Ottawa.
In the future, Baird hopes to work with the rehabilitation program at the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario to support research on autoimmune diseases.
Baird said she appreciates how much support people have shown to The Sock Project and looks forward to growing the initiative even further.
“It was once a silly idea that blossomed into something beautiful,” Baird said. “What comes from this is two things: how the light comes [in] darkness and [a reminder that] at the end of the day, any little idea is not just a silly idea.”
Featured image provided by Jessica Baird.
