THUNDER BAY – Students at St. Paul School were thrilled to announce they collected 441 pairs of shoes for people who really need them.
On Tuesday, the school presented shoes they have collected for the Soles 4 Souls shoe drive to representatives from BioPed.
Terra Moquin, student support person, came up with the idea of St. Paul joining in on the shoe drive.
“I had an idea to do a shoe drive before, but when you collect the shoes and you send them to different countries, you kind of miss that middle piece of how they're going to get there,” she said.
Moquin saw a Soles 4 Souls box at BioPed and set up the shoe drive at the school.
“We started collecting shoes and we went from a goal of 50 to 441," said Moquin. “This was a whole school initiative. It did start with our Grade 2 class who took on the initiative role."
Moquin said they would go around in the mornings with a basket asking classes who brought shoes in.
“They collected the information and they used it as a math lesson. It just came to be a really good project for the whole St. Paul community,” she said.
The students were on board and excited to collect shoes, Moquin said.
"When we started off, we kind of just put it out as the campaign for Soles 4 Souls," she said. "Sometimes kids don't realize the abilities that they have to do these kinds of projects. We can collect the shoes here and we know they go to another country and sometimes kids may think we can't do this because how are they going to get there?"
“When you have communities and businesses like BioPed that have that missing link for us to go the whole way,” she said.
Mark Thomas, owner and manager at BioPed Foot Care, said they have been partnered with Soles 4 Souls for quite a few years.
“The idea is to collect lightly-used shoes locally and then all the BioPeds ship them down to a depot in southern Ontario where they're sorted, packaged and bundled. Eventually they’re put into shipping containers that go to third world countries."
Soles 4 Souls has been around for over 20 years, Thomas said.
“It's been a very successful program bringing light to a lot of families around the world that otherwise would have nothing," he said. "So, we continue to support this.”
Thomas said the shoes from Canada have been going to Central America.
“Places like Guatemala, Honduras and lately there's been a focus on the Dominican Republic," he said. “Soles 4 Souls is an international organization; it goes on even to African countries as well. Our focus is on Central America.”
MJ Ezack, a Grade 2 student at St. Paul School, was proud to say her school collected 441 pairs of shoes.
“I'm glad that our school collected this many shoes for people around the world," said MJ. “If they don't have shoes, then we can donate them and then they don't have to step barefoot on the ground."
BioPed is still collecting gently used footwear. They’re open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday, and have a box inside the door for donations.
