Students bare their 'soles' for charity
Students bought shoes and decorated them.
Published Nov. 11, 2008
Students helped donate 95 pairs of shoes to underprivileged children in Memorial Union on Friday.
With the help of the socially conscious fashion club Visions and TOMS Shoes campus representative Aleigh McKay, students were able to help the cause.
The "Style Your Sole" event was held to raise awareness about TOMS and to sell shoes. For every pair of shoes sold, TOMS donates a pair of shoes to a child in need. In the past shoes have been donated in Argentina, Africa and the U.S.
"We're hoping to sell a hundred pairs of shoes, so that on their next Shoe Drop they'll have a lot of shoes to give," McKay said. "Also, we just want to raise awareness about TOMS and for other companies to look at what they do and maybe get inspired to help other people, too."
At the Style Your Sole event, students were able to purchase a pair of canvas TOMS flats, starting at $40, and decorate them with spray paint, fabric, buttons and fabric paint. In the background, a documentary was shown about a Shoe Drop in South Africa.
"People are continuously in line waiting to buy shoes," sophomore and event coordinator Megan Pieper said at the event. "There hasn't been any lagging point yet so far. We couldn't have asked for it to go better than it has."
As a promotion for the event, Pieper organized the "Bare Feet for Their Feet" campaign, where student volunteers walked around campus on Friday barefooted and wearing shirts promoting the event. Junior Jordon Furnell saw the "Tigers for TOMS" group on Facebook and volunteered to be barefoot.
"A lot of people asked if I was cold, and I was," Furnell said. "I really hope the 'Bare Feet for Their Feet' volunteers helped bring awareness about the event, because it's an important cause."
The idea for having barefoot volunteers came about when McKay and Pieper were looking for ways to creatively promote the event, McKay said. The event coordinators also had help from Visions.
"Aleigh was looking for a fashion organization to help facilitate the project, because we do get free reservations for rooms being an MU-recognized organization," Visions Co-Founder Lauren Grant said. "She and Megan Pieper were great people to work with, and they explained how they believed that our vision coincided with the vision of TOMS shoes."
Grant said Visions had been working with the TOMS event coordinators for about a month-and-a-half before the event, and were happy to see their work pay off.
"I don't think a lot of people knew about TOMS shoes until this event, so we achieved our goal of raising awareness," Grant said.
The Visions founders also saw the event as a way to expand their membership by co-sponsoring an event that coincided with the club's principles.
"Us being African-American women, we are always trying to find ways to reach out and diversify our membership," Visions Co-Founder Sydnea Redwine said. "This was a great opportunity to co-sponsor an event to help spread our idea of socially conscious fashion."
McKay said she hopes the event made students aware of how fortunate they are to have shoes when there are children in the world, and in this country, who don't have that privilege.