I take pictures of my feet (see the side of my blog for the photostream). As I was looking through the One Day Without Shoes materials for tomorrow, I realized how many pairs of shoes I own / have owned. To be fair, my mother and I wear the same shoe size, and she's not exactly shoe-deprived. But it's strange to put our joint shoe collection in direct juxtaposition to children in the developing world who have never owned a pair of shoes.
Tomorrow, April 5, Toms Shoes is sponsoring their One Day Without Shoes, a campaign to raise awareness of the millions of kids in the world who have never owned a pair of shoes. I know most of you have heard of Toms, but for those that haven't, it's a socially conscious for-profit enterprise that donates one pair of shoes for every pair bought to kids in the developing world.
But the coolest part is not that they donate the shoes - it's that the shoes that they donate are custom-made for the children they're going to. They aren't giving people what they can make. They're listening to what it is that people need, and making shoes accordingly. In a world where companies often focus on what their "core competence" is, and what the adjacencies to that space are, Toms is making shoes that people in the developed world want to wear, and shoes that people in the developing world need to wear.
Tomorrow, when I'm not in the lab or the prototype shop, I'll be working without shoes to let people know about the millions of children that walk miles to school without shoes on. I'll be lasershowing without shoes to remind people that kids are dying every day from soil-borne diseases that are entirely preventable and require little more than a covering in high-risk areas. I'll be errand-running without shoes to let people know that in some parts of the world, shoes are a status symbol that keeps children out of school when they can't afford to meet the dress code. What will you be doing without shoes to bring awareness to a child in need?
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| Rockin' a pair of Toms in Jackson Square, New Orleans, Louisiana. |
But the coolest part is not that they donate the shoes - it's that the shoes that they donate are custom-made for the children they're going to. They aren't giving people what they can make. They're listening to what it is that people need, and making shoes accordingly. In a world where companies often focus on what their "core competence" is, and what the adjacencies to that space are, Toms is making shoes that people in the developed world want to wear, and shoes that people in the developing world need to wear.
Tomorrow, when I'm not in the lab or the prototype shop, I'll be working without shoes to let people know about the millions of children that walk miles to school without shoes on. I'll be lasershowing without shoes to remind people that kids are dying every day from soil-borne diseases that are entirely preventable and require little more than a covering in high-risk areas. I'll be errand-running without shoes to let people know that in some parts of the world, shoes are a status symbol that keeps children out of school when they can't afford to meet the dress code. What will you be doing without shoes to bring awareness to a child in need?
1 people have something to say:
your link to "soil-borne diseases" discusses elephantiasis (a.k.a. lymphatic filariasis) which is really more a mosquito-borne disease than a soil-borne disease. children who don't wear shoes are more prone to soil-transmitted helminths such as hookworm and strongyloides.
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