Citypak Project

About The CITYPAK Project:

The CITYPAK Project is a not-for-profit philanthropic organization that works to provide custom designed backpacks to homeless persons in need. Working with exclusive manufacturing partner High Sierra, The CITYPAK Project will have distributed over 68,000+ PAKs to homeless in 147+ cities by years end across North America, including Chicago, Illinois; New York City, Boulder, Colorado; Maui, Hawaii; Austin, Texas; Boston, MA, Washington, DC, San Francisco, Los Angeles, CA, Tampa, FL, Hazelton, PA and international distributions in Toronto and Vancouver. We launched in Australia in 2019 and recently in London, England.

Founded by Chicago businessman and philanthropist Ron Kaplan in 2012, The CITYPAK Project provides a safe, convenient and versatile backpack uniquely designed to meet the constantly changing needs of the homeless. Inspired by the simple desire to create something that would make life on the streets of Chicago a little easier, Kaplan shared his idea with the design team at the international adventure travel gear manufacturer High Sierra. Today, with the help of High Sierra and a growing list of corporate and individual donors and a variety of local and regional non-profit partners, The CITYPAK Project distributes CITYPAKs in growing list of cities across the U.S. The ongoing goal: to design and provide a useful, high quality backpack for the homeless. www.citypak.org

About High Sierra:

A division of Samsonite LLC, High Sierra designs feature-rich, versatile outdoor lifestyle gear for adventurers everywhere. Since our founding in 1978, we’ve committed ourselves to creating durable, affordable product with distinctive details, delivering the freedom to go anywhere—near or far, on roads or trails, on mountain ridges or snowy slopes, no matter what form your adventure takes. In 2012, High Sierra formed a design partnership with the Chicago-based CITYPAK Project [501(c)(3)] to create purposeful, utilitarian backpacks for the homeless. High Sierra is also proud to be the Official Bags supplier to the U.S. Ski, U.S. Snowboarding and U.S. Freeskiing teams. High Sierra. Adventure This Way. www.highsierra.com