Shoes With Heart End of the Year Message

posted on December 19, 2018

The team at Shoes With Heart is thinking about all of the people around the world who are coming together for the holiday season and the end of the year. It’s a time of reflection, peace, and generosity. In our end of the year message, our team is thinking about all of the partners across North America who have joined the shoe drive fundraising movement. We’re also thinking about the more than 4,000 micro-entrepreneurs who have created an economic opportunity for themselves, which provides for them and their families with a living wage.

Our Partners in the U.S.

This year, we’ve had the privilege to partner with families and organization across the United States. Some of our partners have been families who have been looking to adopt a child. We’ve been inspired by parents looking to do whatever it takes to raise the money, which can be as much as $40,000 to adopt a child. We’ve also worked with families who have had someone in their family in need of a service animal. Like Sully, the late President George H. W. Bush’s service dog, there are countless families in need of a service animal, and they’ve come to us to help them raise the funds (check out awesome resources) they need for a specially trained animal.

We’ve had other partners who have needed to raise money for their medical needs because as much as we would like for it to be different, we know that medical costs in the United States are much higher than the rest of the world. Unfortunately, families in need of surgeries or medical supplies often need to raise money, and so many have come to us seeking a creative way to do it.

Other partners we’ve worked with are the small community organizations across our great country who are on the front lines of supporting their local communities. While most of us share the holiday season with our friends and family, there are so many families in need and who are supported by groups such as women and children’s shelters or homeless charities. We’re so proud to have done our part to help these community groups to raise funds for the vital work their doing.

And those Around the World

While we are grateful for our shoe drive fundraising partners throughout the United States, we also reflect on the thousands of micro-entrepreneurs who have partnered with us through the year. It’s been small business owners in developing nations who have purchased the gently worn, used and new shoes for a small cost that have been given to shoe drive fundraisers in the U.S.

We know that many of our prospective partners often wonder why we sell the shoes instead of giving them away to people in developing nations. The reason is very simple. We promote commerce in developing countries as a socially responsible company. If we instead gave away the hundreds of thousands of shoes we get from our shoe drive fundraising partners in the United States, we would destroy commerce opportunities for small business owners seeking to escape poverty by creating and developing their micro-enterprise businesses. Consumers would want free shoes instead of buying footwear from micro-enterprise businesses.

In our final message for this year, the family at Shoes With Heart wants to thank all of our partners and people who have given their shoes to one of the shoe drive fundraising efforts from our partners in the U.S. Thank you for helping so many across our country. We also want to thank our micro-enterprise partners around the world for the trust they place in us. We wish you and yours a peaceful and joyful holiday season, and we look forward to seeing you again in 2019.

 

© 2018 Shoes With Heart. All Rights Reserved.

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