Shoes for Orphan Soles

I got involved with Shoes for Orphan Soles through Buckner, an organization in Dallas. I was originally going to do an internship with them--spend a month in Romania working in the orphanages--but it didn't work out with gratuating and preparing for graduate school. I still wanted to do something to help, so this is it. A shoe drive.

Buckner works internationally with millions of orphans--these children have no belongings of their own. Everything they have belongs to the homes where they live--except their shoes. So you can imagine the joy that a simple pair of shoes would give them. It's something that actually belongs to them.
People to donate shoes are encouraged to stuff a note into the shoes for the child to read--even a family photo. That makes the gift even more precious to them.

I'll be presenting the idea to the youth group this Sunday after church--if all goes well, we'll be working on it together. We'll be promoting the drive in March, actually doing the drive in April, then packing the shoes and sending them off the first part of May.
So far everything is in the planning stages...but I'm hoping to work with the movie theater on an event where people bring shoes instead of buying tickets...and I've started working on some ideas for a shoe/foot-themed art show and auction. Anyway...it's really going to be great. I'm excited to see the response it gets from the community.

With school and everything else going on, I hope this isn't taking on too much....but I'm tired of just talking about stuff I want to do. I'm ready to get off my butt and do something!