TORONTO—Heather Black says the inspiration to start Iloveprint.ca, a website devoted to bringing young people into the printing industry came from a need to give back the community. Together with project leader Craig Belanger, web master Jacob Friedman, other industry members and Ryerson students, Black hopes to create a site marketed to 16-to-18 year olds that will let students know about the opportunities available in the industry.

Iloveprint.ca is designed by Alexandra Pokras

Handling the marketing and communications, Heather who is the daughter of industry veteran and owner of Mary Black Recruiting, Mary Black, registered the domain name for the site last year at Print World and says it has grown from there.

Heather says that the group is involving existing and recent graduates of the printing program at Ryerson University to keep the site current. “The young people want to feel like they have their own industry effort and don’t feel connected to some of the older industry groups that are out there,” she says. “It gives graduates something to have, something where they feel they can give back to the industry and excite young people about getting into the industry.”

The site, which has a soft launch next week and a planned full-launch in December is looking for industry support to cover costs and to start a scholarship for students. “What we really want is to make it a money making endeavor so we can support the website properly,” she says. “For that we need to pay people, you can’t expect people to work for free. The goal is to gain enough funds to offer a scholarship that can be offered to printing industry education programs across the country.”