Senior Zac Bauermaster admits to collecting Jordan sneakers. He even admits to having quite a few pairs of them.
But, during his time student teaching at Manor Middle School, in Lancaster, he put aside his love of Jordan sneakers and began a Soles4Souls collection at the middle school, collecting 1,330 pairs of shoes to donate to those without shoes.
Bauermaster, who is majoring in Social Studies secondary education, helped spur students to donate shoes after teaching a geography unit in a 7th grade classroom.
Bauermaster’s classroom began increasing interested in donating shoes after viewing a video clip depicting child labor.
“We talked about child labor and I felt a need to do some more, even the kids felt the need to do more,” said Bauermaster.
The clip that Bauermaster showed helped the students understand the dangerous conditions that people were working in without shoes.
So after some research, Bauermaster was set on using Soles4Souls to donate the shoes Manor Middle School would collect.
Soles4Souls began when the non-profit organization’s founder and CEO Wayne Elsey, felt called to respond to tragedies affecting the world.
Elsey made his first step towards founding Soles4Souls in 2004 after he and other footwear industry executives donated 250,000 shoes to countries that were affected by the 2004 tsunami in Southeast Asia.
A year after Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans, Elsey and the other executives sent more than one million shoes to the areas that were hit by Katrina. The following year, Soles4Souls was established and since then they have been facilitating the donations to countries with people who need shoes.
Manor Middle school’s goal shoe donation for Soles4Soul was 500 shoes, which they exceeded in their final collection of 1,330 pairs – in fact, the last day Manor Middle School collected 625 pairs of shoes.
The students and faculty of Manor Middle were diligent in collecting the shoes, which began on March 30 and ended April 8. All types of shoes were collected.
“They would forward text messages around to remind each other,” said Bauermaster, who tried to give the student incentive by giving each student a raffle ticket for every pair of shoes they donated.
The raffle took place on Wednesday, April 15. The prizes for the raffle were donated by Business Inside Track. The donated prizes included Nike water bottles and bags to the ten students with winning tickets.
Students collected shoes from their neighborhoods, churches and homes.
One student even brought in 115 pairs of shoes on the last day of collection.
Manor Middle School also sent out letters reminded the parents of the shoe drive, as well as advertising the shoe drive as an option in many homes during spring cleaning. Students in the school’s Peer Helpers group helped Bauermaster organize for the Soles4Souls donation.
The Peer Helpers helped collect donated shoes, decorate donation boxes and go through shoes collected to pick out shoes that were deemed unsuitable for wear.
“I didn’t want them to feel guilty that we have shoes and they don’t. I wanted them to feel the empathy for places around the world,” said Bauermaster.
Bausermaster’s Jordan sneaker collection may be put on hold, but along with students at Manor Middle, they have helped put shoes on the barefooted people of the world.
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