Shoes for Orphan Souls: ShoeNews

Birthday Clubs, Virtual Shoe Drives and More in the New Year

By Analiz González
Buckner International

(DALLAS, Texas) — Putting shoes on the feet of needy children seems simple enough.

But finding and delivering them is a big problem – with a practical solution. And Rachel Garton, director of Buckner Shoes for Orphan Souls, takes practicalities seriously.

Since Garton started as director in April 2007, she and the others have done a lot of assessing, asking and analyzing.

“How can we make it easier for people to give?”

“What do we need to do to facilitate the work of our givers?”

Garton said her team will tackle 2008 with new initiatives that she expects will put more shoes on little bare feet than ever before.

“We are going to be introducing virtual shoe drives,” Garton explained. “People will be able to go online and conduct a virtual collection in which everything can be done over the internet. Someone will be able to go online, send some e-mails and do something philanthropic in one day, literally.”

Plans are also underway to launch a Birthday Club. For several years now, generous children have asked their friends to donate Shoes for Orphan Souls instead of buying them toys on their birthdays. Birthday Club will provide downloadable party invitations and e-cards.

And Garton intends to do more to promote the Big Foot Campaign, which seeks to collect shoes in larger sizes, and Cold Feet, a campaign that gathers warm boots for children in Eastern European countries. There will also be emphasis on inviting groups to go on mission trips to sort shoes in the Dallas warehouse.

“You won’t need a passport and you can drink the water,” Garton said.

Another practical thing planned for 2008 is providing churches and Rotary Clubs with the tools they need for drives, like downloadable flyers, posters and accessible sermon notes.

“We shipped more than 1.6 million shoes since Shoes for Orphan Souls started under Buckner in 1999,” Garton said. “We also topped 5,400 volunteers. We’ve never had that many volunteers. They contributed about 17,000 hours of their time as a whole this past year. Also, more than 450 thousand shoe drives have been held since the program initiated.”

But Garton isn’t satisfied.

“We’ve got a lot of work to do, a lot of shoes to raise,” she said. “There are 143 million orphans in the world. And to date, we’ve only raised shoes for 1.6 million of them.”

For information on Shoes for Orphan Souls, call 1-877-7ORPHAN or visit www.ShoesforOrphanSouls.org.