Share Your Soles Distributes Shoes to People in Need

In 1999 when Mona Purdy was traveling in Central America, she saw children painting tar on the soles of their bare feet so they could run races during their village festivals. An American orthopedic surgeon she met in Guatemala told her children did this because they had no shoes to wear. If the children had shoes, he added, he wouldn’t have to keep traveling to the region to perform amputations of these children’s infected limbs. Raise money for this problem and other problems.

On the plane trip home, Purdy thought about all the shoes Americans throw away. She stared at her $100 pair of running shoes and thought about her own children, who had so much more than they needed.

After Purdy returned home, she couldn’t get the picture of the children she’d seen and the physician’s words out of her mind. She went to a few neighborhood schools and asked families to donate any used children’s shoes they may have. Soon, she had collected more than 5,000 pairs of shoes.

“Around the Christmas season that year, I brought the shoes to an orphanage in Guatemala and thought I’d done a good deed. One of the nuns and I made sure each child had a pair and left the rest to be distributed. My work was done,” she says. “When I was about to leave, one of the workers asked me, when am I coming back? That simple question changed my life.”

Again on the flight home, Purdy thought about those children and realized she had to keep doing this. She created a nonprofit organization named Share Your Soles , and began collecting boots, sandals, slippers and sneakers. Soon, she outgrew her garage. A local real estate business heard about the organization and donated a warehouse.  Sneakers had to be washed and bleached, while dress shoes had to be polished. Soon, volunteers of all ages came to help her.

People in 38 states have participated in the Share Your Soles movement with shoe drives and fund-raisers. All the shoes come to her headquarters and are processed from there. This ensures good quality control as the shoes are prepared and given out.
   
Since its beginning, Share Your Soles has been working with the Lakota Sioux. Now, Share Your Soles works with eight tribes: the Blackfoot, Lakota, Dakota, Pueblo, Navajo, Apache, Cheyenne and the Crow. “Thousands of pairs of shoes have already been distributed to them,” says Purdy.
   
Purdy is starting a new program for people on the reservations to get shoes for their families and themselves. The unemployment rate is high, so the schools want parents to volunteer. Now, in order to get shoes, adults will need to earn service hours, and shoes will be their reward for volunteering.
 
In addition, Purdy, reaches out to shelters, allowing residents who volunteer for the shelter to choose their own shoes from her collection. “You elevate people when you let them do for themselves,” she says.

Twice a year, Purdy—with the help of Illinois Secretary of State Jesse White (one of the members of her board)—gives away 5,000 pairs of winter boots on the south side of Chicago to lower-income families. The distribution takes place with the help of the Jesse White Tumblers.

“When you reach out to a child or an adult as well, it is an investment in the future,” says Purdy.

Share Your Soles also provides help when disaster strikes. More than 13,000 pairs of shoes were transported by a Nexus truck to the Astro Dome in New Orleans to help the Katrina victims. Volunteers as well as Purdy were there to hand-distribute the shoes. Recent disaster relief efforts include shoes being sent to Evansville, Indiana due to tornadoes and shoes sent to Malibu after the fires as well as mud slides in Equador.

Today, her organization partners with small businesses and such major corporations as American Airlines, Fed Ex Worldwide and Nexus Distributions to send shoes around the world. People who donate money help pay for detergent, bleach, hot water and electricity as well as a new washing machine. Processing the shoes, traveling from the warehouse and shipping the shoes in one 40-foot container cost Share Your Soles $25,000. “We need money,” she says. “Giving me your shoes isn’t enough today.”

Thanks to Purdy’s efforts in bringing shoes to desperately impoverished people throughout the world without consideration of boundaries and borders, she is being honored by the Foundation for Civilian Bravery with a special award for Service to Humanity. In addition, she is receiving A World of Difference Award from the humanitarian Sister City organization in Tempe, Arizona to bring attention to her work.

To donate some of your own shoes, visit shareyoursoles.org to locate your nearest drop-off point, or make a financial contribution to the group through Razoo.

By Vicki Gerson