TOMS Chief Shoe Giver Blake Mycoskie is interviewed last fall while visiting campus. TOMS sponsored Thursday’s One Day Without Shoes movement, encouraging people to go barefoot to raise awareness about the lack of shoes in developing nations. (Casey Lee)
Many students throughout campus had dirty feet by the end of their Thursday classes.
In effort to raise awareness of children without shoes in less fortunate nations, people walked without running shoes, boots or even flip flops to take part in TOMS’ One Day without Shoes.
Perhaps after going barefoot for part of the day, students visited tomsshoes.com to ease the pain. TOMS accomplishes its efforts by giving a pair of shoes to a child in need for every pair purchased.
SMU freshman Samantha Matthews, a supporter of TOMS, is responsible for getting the event rolling on the Hilltop. Inspired by the company’s philanthropy to help those in need, she feels that SMU students should keep in mind that there are others in the world who need help.
“This is to raise awareness of those who walk without shoes every day,” she said. “The more people who know about the company, the more there will be who want to give back.”
According to the TOMS website, this issue is important for people to think of in their everyday lives. The website states that children in some developing nations walk miles to get medical help or clean water. In the duration of this walk, they can contract diseases such as Podoconiosis. This disfiguring disease can be avoided-by wearing shoes.
For sophomore Kelly Caldwell, the company hit hard with its mission on Thursday, especially with making people experience something new.
“I think it is a great way to raise awareness for TOMS,” she said.
Many children get their feet incredibly dirty from many days of going barefoot–Caldwell felt it after one day as she had “blisters all over [her] feet and they [were] stained with dirt.”
Since TOMS started in May 2006 by SMU graduate Blake Mycoskie, they have covered 140,000 pairs of little feet. They plan to put 300,000 pairs of shoes on little ones in 2009. Caldwell believes this to be a company set apart from others.
“I think more companies should strive to give back like TOMS does to the world,” she said. “It is so important to help others and not just do something merely for personal profit.”
SMU was not the only campus raising awareness yesterday for all the uncovered feet in the world. Many other campuses across the country participated–one of which was Oklahoma City University. Courtney Cahen, a freshman at OKCU, said she wanted to send both a message and get an experience out of the day.
Cahen walked barefoot Thursday because she “truly wanted to see what it would feel like to walk, ironically, in the shoes of someone who has none.”
She sent the message to her campus yesterday, trying to ignore the pain going from her feet through her back.
“I tried to avoid all grass and keep to hard ground-much like any person in Africa might have to do-but by the end of the day, my feet were sore and dirty, and I could almost not take it after 6 measly hours,” she said.
Thinking back to your friends’ feet yesterday, you may have seen most covered, despite the day’s efforts. Even so, people like Kelly Caldwell did their best to remind students of TOMS’ cause.
“I think people need a reminder every once and a while of how fortunate we are for the simplest things, one of them being shoes,” she said, “this is not something that is life changing, but it does give a small dose of reality as to what others are going through in the word,” She said.
The company’s efforts hit home with Courtney Cahen as she said of Thursday: “Today has been honestly awful.”
