share your soles

Not knowing what i wanted to major in, i was frantically searching for the perfect major that would suit me and my goals. It was imperative that i chose a major i could put into good use in the future; not for myself but for the underprivileged or the handicap. With a lot of guidance, i found ID.

With the knowledge that I gain in this major, I would like to put it towards helping people in need whether they are our neighbors or living in poverty-stricken places outside the country.

From last week’s lecture, I was left feeling very guilty and small which only made me hungrier than I was already to reach out to those in need. With that in mind I looked up designs that are targeted towards people in third world countries and I came across shoes/sandals.


Dated back as early as 26-40,000 years ago, shoes have been worn by people to get around “comfortably”. It was a way to protect the feet from weather, shards of materials, and hard surfaces, which lead to callusing.

When mud and dirt dries/hardens on the feet, the material of the shoe plus the earth help insulates the feet in colder weather.
Today, shoes are heavily influenced by fashion and are seriously overpriced but with the right materials and design, a shoe can be created out of all recycled materials and be just as durable… if not, more.

In the 1940’s, the Vietnamese created strong sandals out of old truck tires. There were many advantages to wearing these sandals during the war; one being that many soldiers suffered from “trench-foot”, which is a fungal infection, caused by the thick boots they were required to wear. These sandals were great because they were practical, easy to clean, comfortable, long lasting because they are truck tires, and they dried easily.

Today, studies show that there are almost twice as many tires as there are feet in this country… so what do we do with all those tires that have been thrown away? People discovered a way to recycle the rubber tires and use them for making sandals to send to the less fortunate people around the world.

Many organizations today make these simple sandals and send them off to third world countries to replace their old sandals made of water bottles and other pieces of trash.


Mona Purdy is a woman who started the organization called “Share Your Soles” and she has collected over 350,000 pairs of shoes which she sent off to Haiti, Honduras, Kenya and the Dominican Republic. Children in these areas have no shoes or have had maybe 2-3 shoes in their life. With these shoes, they are able to go wherever they want without worrying what they are stepping on or about breaking callused skin on the bottom of their feet.

On an interview with ABC7 news, Mona Purdy says…"Shoes are transportation. Shoes are education, shoes are health insurance. We don't get that here. We take them for granted, but to them, they are car. They get them where they want to go safely. (I still get that high from the first time I did this. I've never lost that, it's great."