Shoes & Hope, a non-profit organization, has donated 150 pairs of cleats to the Rush REACH program. The organization is a DBA under Affiliated International Ministries that uses shoes as a conversation starter to share their mission. It is a mission that goes much deeper than shoes.
The organization states their mission on their website as:
“Shoes & Hope is dedicated to working with communities in the developing world to address challenges including clean water, sanitation and hygiene. By building lasting relationships in these communities and supporting community-initiated, sustainable development work, we are able to teach and encourage them to use their gifts, resources and abilities to contribute to their own progress.”
Christy Weber, the founder of Shoes & Hope, started the organization when she was doing mission work in Guatemala:
“I realized that the village that we had been visiting yearly didn't have access to clean water. That's when Shoes & Hope was born. It started with a goal to raise $16,000 to fund a clean water system in the village of Quebrada de Agua, Guatemala. Although the shoe collection piece started slowly, we had donors that supported seeing the project through!”
The team was able to complete their project and then continued to work to restore the hygiene facilities in the same village. Shoes & Hope has now provided clean water to four different villages over the past four years.
So, why shoes?
“The shoes are really a way for us to share the mission of clean water and some of life's most basic necessities,” Christy explains. “ Something that is important to me is to have some local impact as well as global. After we pick up shoes from a shoe drive, they are taken to a local non-profit called Community Living. Their day program for adults with disabilities are able to sort the shoes for us. They match them up and tie or rubber band them together and count them into bags of 25. This creates a job for them at no cost to us. Once we pick up the shoes from their centers, they are stored until we have enough to ship. We are paid per pound by an exporter for the shoes.”
Shoes & Hope pulls specific shoes that are kept separate and donated. New and professional shoes are donated to another local non-profit called Connections to Success for their Dress for Success program and slippers are washed and donated to the Salvation Army Homeless Shelter.
Cleats are another kind of shoe that are kept separately. Shoes & Hope searches for the best home for the cleats.
“Last year we donated 150 pairs of soccer cleats to a soccer academy in Haiti and 170 pairs of baseball cleats to Tsunami Waves which works with the Dominican Republic,” Christy stated.
Shoes & Hope and Rush Soccer crossed paths through Christy Weber and Josh Tyler’s connection through the Cottleville-Weldon Spring Chamber of Commerce. The two have known each other for years, but just recently came in contact again.
“I know Josh Tyler through our local Chamber of Commerce. I stopped by the office a few weeks ago and he happened to stop by as well,” Christy remembers. “I mentioned that I was getting ready to leave for Guatemala and he mentioned his upcoming trip to Honduras for Rush Soccer. He told me a little bit about the REACH Program and I asked if they took soccer cleats. He said yes and connected the dots. I dropped the cleats off 2 weeks later to his office and he brought them to Colorado with him!”
Rush is incredibly grateful for the donation and is looking forward to redistributing the cleats to benefit kids around the world through the REACH program.
“Right now the shoes are in our REACH shed at The Titan House, but the cleats we collect are a valuable commodity for our Rush affiliates around the world,” says REACH coordinator Dan Highstead. “They will be shipped off to locations where they will enrich the lives of the children in those communities. Thank you again, Christy.”
To learn more about how Shoes & Hope is enriching the lives of others and to learn how to get involved, visit their website HERE.
And, to learn more about Rush’s REACH program, visit our website HERE.