All About Shoes

I have always had a love for shoes. When I was young I have memories of my mom and I shopping on weekends at the mall. We would gravitate towards shoes and clothes.

One pair of shoes in particular stands out in my memory. I was of Junior High age, so that would put the time frame in the '80s. The shoes had red laces, the shoes themselves were a brown suede high top boot. Now, I would not necessarily say that they were the 'in' fashion look but the capture was that they were unique and others wanted them. Every time I wore the shoe - I would receive a compliment. People (and I) thought those pair of boots were it. 

I wore those boots to nothing. Year after year, I wore those boots. They held up through the rain and muck of winter. They worked with every bit of jeans that I owned. The red laces, I am sure, were the ticket to awesome. 

While I still love a good pair of shoes - whether they are for fashion or comfort or just because - there are people who have none. I know we all know this, but when it reached my level of conscious that I could no longer turn away from reality, I knew I needed to act. 

I was honored to have my friends join me this week in cutting fabric for the future shoes of Sole Hope. Supplied with a huge box of fabrics, scissors, pins, and patterns by Sole Hope, we made it into a party and spent a morning tracing and cutting. 

The cut fabrics will be sent back to Sole Hope, where they will be matched up with rubber soles cut from used bicycle tires, before traveling in March to the other side of the world to land in Ndola, Zambia, and Bugabo Village in Uganda. There, the Sole Hope team will educate and train women how to assemble and sew the shoes. The proud owners will first be the Orphan children who are shoe-less of those two villages. Orphan children whose parents may have left forever either by death or for reasons unexplained, or whose parent's leave for days at a time on a very regular basis in search of food and water for their children. Orphaned because they are alone, taking in survival by themselves until their parent returns, or until someone else finds the Orphan.

A shoe. 

A shoe can save the life of these precious people, who have not the resources or the know how, about how a shoe can stop the germs from literally eating them alive starting with their feet all the way up. 

So to give of our time this week was a gift to ourselves knowing that we can make a difference - but more importantly, a gift to them with one shoe to save one sole one step at a time.