The Humanitarian Benefits of Donating Your Shoes

Footwear is a basic need that most of us take for granted every day. Many of us have an abundance of footwear sitting idle at home, while many disadvantaged people in the world do not have even an adequate pair of shoes. Healthcare is the crucial reason why footwear is so desperately needed, as a good pair of shoes will protect our feet from scrapes, cuts, and contaminants that lead to potentially serious health issues.

Over 300 million children world-wide have never had one pair of shoes. Most children in third world countries grow up barefooted. This puts them at risk of injuries and infectious wounds. Soil can transmit parasites through open cuts or sores on the feet, which is one of the leading causes of disease in developing countries. Some children are deprived of an education, because shoes are a uniform requirement for attendance to school. Donating your pair of unwanted but wearable shoes provides a solution for them.

Village women & children need a good pair of shoes to perform their daily challenges. Walking is often the primary mode of transportation in developing countries. They can walk for miles to get food, water, shelter and medical help. Village women usually accomplish their daily task of fetching drinking water for their family without proper footwear. They can carry as much as 50 pounds of water back to their village for 5 miles. This is a big challenge for those without shoes. You can help make this task more achievable for these women.
(Source: Soles4souls updated 2009 http://www.soles4souls.org/areas/global.html)

The Environmental Benefits of Donating Your Shoes

Donating shoes to the In Your Shoes program helps your school or organization go GREEN. Australia's increasing use of resources and disposable goods results in more waste being produced than ever before. In this global economy, clothes and shoes are manufactured cheaply to accommodate rapidly changing consumer trends. These products take up approximately 8% of waste worldwide.

In Your Shoes cuts down the amount of discarded shoes that end up in the landfill. It also saves shoes from being incinerated, which in the process releases many toxic chemicals into the environment. Burning rubber from shoes produces smoke containing cancer causing chemicals, acids, carbon monoxide, zinc and lead.

In Your Shoes helps you achieve the 3 principles of recycling: by REDUCING the amount of shoes discarded, REUSING these wearable shoes for those in need, and thereby effectively RECYCLING reusable materials. This builds community awareness about sustainability issues and teaches individual social responsibility. By getting involved with In Your Shoes, your organization or school might also meet their government and local council recycling requirements while supporting environmental sustainability initiatives.

Global Effort

Shoe collection and donation programs have been established around the world. The following are examples of the programs:

Reuse-A-Shoe Reuse-A-Shoe program takes worn-out kicks and turns them into Nike Grind, a material used in sports surfaces, playgrounds and even new Nike products.

Recycled Runners Recycled Runners is an Australian non-profit organisation that collects old and discarded running shoes from athletes and passes them on to needy runners and many others in the Australia and Pacific region.

Shoe4africa Shoe4africa is a worldwide program that is based in New York but operates by supplying shoes to Kenya. It aims to provide shoes to disadvantaged women and children. It also sponsors many African athletes who raced internationally and help provides shoes to the bare-footed communities around Kenya.

SolesUnited Crocs The SolesUnited initiative has given many needy people around the world their first pair of shoes. SolesUnited shoes have a slight tweak in design to differentiate them from the traditional Crocs. They have sent shoes to places such as Chile, El Salvador, India, Pakistan, Kenya, Vietnam and Zimbabwe.

Soles4Souls Soles4Souls works with many large companies to invite customers to donate wearable used footwear for those in need around the world. These people include the landfills workers, orphanage and village women around the world.

Be Part of the Global Effort

Around the world, it is widely recognized that your unwanted but wearable shoes are badly needed by many whom are less fortunate. By joining the In Your Shoes program, you can be part of this global effort to make the lives of the less fortunate more comfortable. This program will also benefit your colleagues, friends and students by getting them to learn about both sustainable living and participating in social responsibility. It only takes each person to donate one pair of shoes to make a difference.

Therefore, we encourage your organization, school or business to join us in this social and environmental movement by joining the In Your Shoes program.

Help us achieve our goal by signing up now at inyourshoes.kotk@gmail.com.
Find Out How to Get Involved

Give your old shoes a new lease of life and save them from the landfill.