The Smith County Lady Owls high school soccer team decided to put their summer to good use. There have been multiple fundraisers done throughout the county to raise money for each booster club and sport. The Lady Owls wanted to do something different by giving back in a way that not only impacted the community, but could make an impact worldwide. They chose to run a Soles4Souls shoe drive. A shoe drive gives people the chance to give something they don’t use or wear any longer to someone who desperately needs it.
What is Soles4Souls? How do you help? I have to say, I learned quite a lot about what S4S does in just a short amount of time. Soles4Souls is a not for profit global social enterprise committed to fighting poverty through the collection and distribution of shoes and clothing. They advance their mission in two distinct ways: Short Term Relief and Long Term Solutions. By free shoe distribution they are able to provide new shoes to those in need. They receive shoe and clothing donations from corporate partners, and work with non-profit partners which have included homeless shelters, after school programs, international and disaster relief organizations to get shoes and clothes to the ones that need them most, here in the US and around the world. The Long Term Solution is by Micro-enterprise. Places like Haiti, Honduras and Africa, work is extremely hard to find. Many live in deep poverty. They offer opportunity for thousands to create small businesses selling shoes and clothing, (a micro-enterprise.) This is a powerful and sustainable way for them to lift themselves and their families out of poverty.
Now comes the good part! First things first, we needed a target goal. We chose to attempt to gather 200 pairs of shoes. It seemed like a good even attainable number. Next on the list was a way for people in the community to give us their gently used or new shoes. Then we needed a way to advertise with flyers. Our team reached out to local businesses here in Smith County to ask if they would consider being a donation drop off site for the extent of our shoe drive. I can’t say how amazing it felt to hear the words, “Yes! We would love to help. What can we do?” And most of the time, they said yes before we could finish giving them our reason!
Our local businesses that agreed to be donation drop off sites have been phenomenal. Every week the girls would give up their early Saturday mornings to meet up with the coaches’ wives and travel to each site to make a pick up. We can’t thank our sites enough for holding loads of stinky shoes for us! The donation drop-off sites were strategically placed so that everyone across the county could participate. A super huge thank you goes out to Wilson Bank & Trust of Carthage, Todd and Angela Scurlock of SavWay, Citizen’s Bank of Gordonsville, Gordonsville Public Library and Smith County Library. We appreciate your cooperation so very much. The Lady Owls also walked to several other businesses in the county to ask if they could leave flyers for their customers to see, just to help begin spreading the word.
The collection of shoes came pouring in week after week. This community has been unbelievable. Some folks were even buying new pairs of shoes just to donate, which shows you how amazing Smith County truly is. Each of the Lady Owls also brought in donations. From the flyers we got calls from a couple of businesses that had their own collection of shoes they wanted to donate. And of course we gladly accepted. Dollar General Store of Gordonsville donated a whopping 91 pairs of shoes! With just that donation we were already halfway to our goal! The Smith County Help Center sent 4 huge bags of shoes to the donation pile as well.
As the shoe drive came to an end, the girls gathered up the boxes and the shoes were sent to the Soles4Souls warehouse in Old Hickory. We didn’t really know how many we had at the time, although with a rough estimate of 300 pairs of shoes we not only met our goal but exceeded it. That’s a lot of shoes and we were feeling pretty proud. But when we got a call from the warehouse with a final total, we were speechless. The Lady Owls had accumulated 585 pairs of shoes! A total we never dreamed of. Even though our Lady Owls put in the extra time and work for the shoe drive, the real heroes are the people of this county. Without them or their support, we could have never succeeded. Well done Smith County, well done.
Submitted by Renee Smith
