Students from St Paul Elementary School have made a significant donation to Soles4Souls.
Students have collected 441 shoes for people in need.
The shoes were picked up by BioPed Thunder Bay which is partnered with Soles4Souls.
BioPeds across the province will be sending shoe donations to a warehouse in southern Ontario for them to be prepared to be shipped off.
“I had an idea to do a shoe drive before, but when you collect the shoes and you want to send them to different countries, you kind of miss that middle piece of how they’re gonna get there,” explained Student Support Person Terra Moquin. “So BioPed had a Soles4Souls box at their business and we touched base with BioPed and they got on board with our program.
Initially, the program started in a grade 2 classroom before blossoming into a school-wide event.
When they first started collecting shoes the hope was to collect 50.
“It did start with our grade two class, they took on the initiative role,” explained Moquin. “They went around in the mornings with a basket, asking classes who brought shoes in, they collected the information they used it also as a math lesson and it just came to be a really good project for the whole Saint Paul community.”
Moving forward the school hopes they can run this event again.
“It is something that we’d like to continue doing. We may not do it yearly because we did have a lot of shoes come in maybe every couple of years, maybe also throw it out to other schools who might want to come aboard with this program, maybe do a bit of a challenge throughout the Catholic Board or other schools just in the community.”
Used and gently used shoes were accepted.
According to the Soles4Souls website, the shoes are used for the following:
- 4Relief – “We help get new shoes and clothing to people in crisis, freeing up financial resources they can use toward other needs.”
- 4Opportunity – “We help people launch and sustain their own small business selling donated shoes and clothing.”
- 4EveryKid – “We provide brand new shoes to kids in underserved communities, eliminating a barrier to educational and extracurricular opportunities”
According to BioPed Thunder Bay, most of St Paul’s shoes will be used through 4Opprotunity in Central America.
Although the school, drive is over, BioPed Thunder Bay still has a Soles4Souls box on site and they are accepting donations at all times.
St Paul Grade 2 Students before handing off their donations – (Cj Goater/Acadia Broadcasting)
