Students, faculty and staff of Seneca Hall are on their way to collecting 10,000 pairs of one item many people around the world never own — shoes.
Soles4Souls, a nonprofit organization based out of Nashville, Tenn., was founded by Wayne Elsey, who began collecting shoes in 2004 in response to the tsunami disaster in Southeast Asia. He raised over 250,000 pairs.
In 2005, the organization distributed more than 700,000 pairs to the victims of Hurricane Katrina. Today the organization has collected over 3 million shoes and plans to raise another 3 million in 2008 alone.
“They [the shoes] may be sent to a place that had a natural disaster in the U.S. or possibly an orphanage in Africa,” said Julie Johnson, manager of event development for Soles4Souls. “The shoes end up all over the world.”
Rebecca Alexander, a resident assistant in Mohawk Hall and the Mohawk representative for the Soles4Souls campaign, said each building in College-in-the-Woods has a labeled box, and every night the RAs from Seneca Hall collect the shoes from the boxes. The collection will continue until May 9.
“A lot of people are giving shoes in, almost every day the box fills up,” Alexander said. “The response has been great, some of the shoes look almost brand new. When I see a real nice pair I bring them into the office so they don’t get stolen.”
According to a Soles4Souls pamphlet, people across the world are in desperate need of shoes.
“Over 300 million children are without shoes, and approximately 1.3 billion people in the world live on under $2 a day,” the pamphlet reads.
Every donation is put to use in one way or another.
“We use every pair that comes in,” Johnson said. “The unusable shoes are recycled into rubber. Even the high-heel shoes are sent to an organization that helps women who cannot afford clothes for interviews in the workforce.”
Jon Katz, a junior School of Management student, recently donated an old pair of Michael Jordan sneakers.
“When I heard about the program, I looked in my closet and saw a lot more extra sneakers than I thought I had,” he said. “It feels good to know I helped somebody somewhere.”
Adam Goodman, a junior, dropped off several pairs of shoes after spring break from when he was younger.
“I still happened to have a lot of my old shoes; now they can go to people who have no shoes,” Goodman said. “I can’t imagine walking around in the cold all day, stepping on random things on the floor.”
The Soles4Souls pamphlet says more than 1.5 billion pairs of shoes “lay idle in American closets.”
“Oneida has already raised over 100 pairs of shoes,” said Rebecca Goldberg, council president of Oneida Hall. “It’s a great event for a great cause.”
The number of shoes collected in total so far has not yet been determined.
Shoes will be collected in any dorm community from now until May 9.