Why Shoes?

Globally, nearly 1 billion people lack adequate footwear. Of those 1 billion, an estimated 20 million children in sub–Saharan Africa are walking without shoes in extreme temperatures. Such cases of children without shoes can impact their education and health. Research has shown that, while walking barefoot, children can get intestinal worms such as hookworms and contract parasites known as Jiggers. While both are painful and detrimental to children’s ability to walk, hookworm infection can lead to chronic illness and in some cases, death. According to the CDC the most serious effects of hookworm infection are blood loss leading to anemia, in in addition to protein loss. These can be dangerous for children living in impoverished nations with no access to proper medical care. Shoes are easily attainable in developed countries, but it is a luxury for many children who are living without

How We’re Making Impacts

Our mission for the Walking Right Project is to provide access to children and students who do not have proper footwear to wear to school. With this in mind, our goal is to sustainably,

  • prevent foot injury and/or other foot infections that can be deadly
  • Solve community issues
  • Inform/educate students
  • Improve student reading skills

To learn more about how we are making impacts with our goals, please email walkingrightproject@fdsf.org

Through this project, The Family Development and Samaritan Foundation will reduce the number of children who do not have access to shoes. Especially, children who are threading to school. This is part of our initiative to promote education for children. Our goal is to eliminate challenges faced by children that might hinder their education.

The Walking Right Project has provided shoes for children in school in nations such as Congo and Nigeria. We would like to extend our efforts to other nations with children in need. We would like for this project to be sustainable and provide for many more children. We would like to partner with this different donors and organizations to complete this pilot project. This project can be done in nations with children lacking shoes such as Tanzania, Malawi, Somalia, Central African Republic, South Sudan who are some of the poorest countries in the world.

By the Numbers

Our partnership with Nike and Vans, altogether they have donated 1,500 shoes and we’ve been able to give over 1,000 shoes in more than 3 countries.

What Can You Do To Help?

  • Become a partner
  • Donate
  • Start

Individual Donation:

  • Shoes 4 school Campaign
  • Encourage individuals to donate a pair of shoes for impoverished children
  • Target organizations, companies, churches, etc.
  • Promote shoes donations during holidays such as thanksgiving (Thanksgiving Shoe Box) and Christmas (Christmas Shoe Box)