Last February or March, a dozen or so pairs of my old trail running shoes were stuffed into an oversize, overweight suitcase and flown off to Africa. This is where they ended up.
There are many organizations out there that take in used (but still in wearable condition) running shoes and send them over to Africa. Woontanara Aid just happens to be my local connection. From the sounds of it, collecting shoes and getting them to Guinea is logistically difficult for this particular organization and, at this point, it's not something that they are really focused on. Woontanara Aid recognizes the need for shoes over there, and they were happy to make room for mine, but their focus happens to be in other areas like education and health care.
My biggest request is to never throw away your old shoes unless they are completely, utterly unwearable. There are plenty of people in this country that would love to have a still decent looking pair of top-tier footwear. And there are countless other people in other countries much worse off than ours that may have never worn shoes in their entire life. So donate them. Either to your local second-hand store or maybe to an international shoe-specific charitable organization. Give the gift. Share the love. You may never know just where your old shoes will end up. But won't you feel good knowing they may cause a reaction like this?
For more information, please visit
http://www.woontanaraaid.org/
Here are a couple more websites for non-profit organizations that are shoe specific:
1 comment:
Awesome Trevor. :) That must be so rewarding to see the pix of people using the shoes too! :) Recently I went through my closet and got rid of three big bags full of clothes and some pairs of shoes and took them to Salvation Army and Goodwill. It felt good.
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