I like it when I stumble upon a story about regular people making a difference, so when read about Greg Woodburn and Jennifer Pierce, I knew I had to blog about them.
Greg is a sophomore at the University of Southern California. He ran track in high school, but knee and hip injuries forced him to quit. He wasn’t happy that he had to quit running, but his parents, Woody and Lisa, pointed out that some kids can’t run because they don’t even have running shoes.
That point stuck with Greg. He began collecting castoff shoes of family and friends, scrubbing them clean, and then donating them to the needy. The first shipment went to an orphanage in Uganda.
Greg started his own non-profit organization titled Share Our Souls (SOS) which has now been renamed to Give Running http://www.giverunning.org. The organization’s mission is not to just collect new and slightly used shoes, but to also help the environment by recycling.
Since its inception, Give Running has donated 4,700 pairs of refurbished shoes to children, mostly in the United States.
But, Greg’s organization isn’t the only one in the country collecting shoes. Jennifer Pierce also runs an SOS – Share Our Shoes https://shareourshoes.org/Home_Page.html. This SOS runs under the same premises – clean out your closets of shoes you don’t use to share with the world.
What promoted Jennifer to start her SOS? Her daughter came home in 2008 and told her that her friend Vennessa couldn’t play because she didn’t have any shoes as her family couldn’t afford them. Jennifer collected shoes for Vennessa and her entire family. That made her realize there was a real need to help people get proper footwear.
Jennifer pointed out an alarming statistic – “There are 400 million kids without shoes in today’s world and at the same time, there are 1 1/2 billion unused shoes sitting in American closets.” That’s right – she said “billion.” She also noted that half of the children in the world have never owned a pair of shoes. Not having shoes to wear causes the children to suffer from foot-borne disease, injury, and infection that can result in death. In some cases, this could easily avoided with a pair of shoes.
As for kids in the U.S., they may have shoes, but not the proper kind to play certain sports. By giving them the right shoes, SOS hopes to promote their self esteem by allowing them to participate in school activities.
So, if you have time, look in your closet to see just how many pairs of shoes you have that you never wear and consider donating them to help others.
(This image has been (or is hereby) released into the public domain by its author, RapidAssistant at the wikipedia project. This applies worldwide.)
