Group collects shoes for poverty-stricken families
A group of USU students are collecting shoes around campus that will be shipped to Third World villages throughout Africa and South America.
In 2009 two friends came together to form non-profit organization Project Sole to help provide shoes for people in low-income countries.
After serving LDS missions, Jaron Wilson said he and co-founder Zach Stevens realized the amount of people living in scant conditions and the effect not having shoes had on them.
“We have seen the conditions and things that were lacking there,” Wilson said.
Between their service experience and the time they spent doing fundraising when they were younger, Wilson and Stevens agreed and said they had the right combination of expertise to get the project going.
“We were both involved in sports and did all the typical fundraisers, and we thought we could come up with something better and more effective,” Wilson said.
Wilson’s brother Keaton Reed, a USU junior majoring in English, said he’s in a group for a management class service project and had the idea to help collect shoes for Project Sole.
“There are already so many charities that ask for money and food and other necessities, so why not look for other ways to lend people support?” Reed asked. “Shoes are expensive and difficult to come by in some places, and therefore many people just don’t own them. Shoes prevent a lot of diseases that are caused by bacteria that collect on bare feet.”
Meg Salmon, a senior majoring in management information systems, serves as the group’s leader.
“We wanted to do something that could affect both our local community as well as worldwide,” she said, “but we couldn’t do it on our own, we needed an organization like this to help us.”
Part of the class project is to help raise money for Small Enterprise Education and Development, a group that provides small business loans in third-world countries. Project Sole has partnered with SEED and has promised to donate $2 for every pair of shoes collected, according to entrepreneurship major Kyle Ivins, another group member.
“We didn’t want to do the boring, regular project people usually do for this class,” Ivins said. “This way we’re helping two organizations at once and making a bigger difference.”
Although this is the first Project Sole drive that has taken place at USU, the organization has collected shoes all around the country. Last year, the group collected more than 300,000 pairs of shoes, Wilson said. The organization works with Boy Scouts of America, high schools and other charity groups to collect shoes to ship to these countries.
After collected, shoes are shipped to the nearest Project Sole warehouse. Once there, the shoes are cleaned, paired together and sent around the world. Organizers work with other non-profit groups to match wish lists and needed supplies, Wilson said.
There are boxes set up in buildings around campus where shoes can be donated, Salmon said.
The group is hoping to collect at least 500 pairs of shoes, she said, but would love to get more than that. The Sports Academy has planned to donate shoes as well, by giving all the shoes left in its lost and found, Ivins said. Scout troops and school groups from around Cache Valley and other parts of Utah are also collecting shoes, Ivins said.
“By doing this we are helping our community environmentally by getting rid of used shoes that will otherwise be thrown away,” Reed said. “We are helping people in other countries who don’t have access to good footwear, and we are helping SEED help other people start their own businesses so they can become self-sustaining. The best thing is we aren’t asking for money or blood or anybody’s time, all someone has to do is donate a pair of old shoes, and by virtue they are also donating $2 to a very, very worthy cause.”
“We would love to help SEED, but shoes are the priority. If we can raise the money, great, but it’s just a side effect,” Salmon said. “We just want to get campus involved in any way we can.”
– megan.allen@aggiemail.usu.edu