Video extra: Visit MyDaytonDailyNews.com to find out more about Shoes 4 the Shoeless and its partnership with the Dayton YMCA and the Mustard Seed Foundation.
We didn’t have a lot when I was a kid, but my feet were protected by patent leather Mary Janes, jelly shoes, penny loafers and Chuck Taylor All Star sneakers.
Cool shoes were important, and mine weren’t always cool.
I remembered the embarrassment of being called out for wearing so-called generic running shoes from Payless Shoesource, Kmart and Value City.
When I earned my own money or when my mother could afford to splurge, I’d buy Nike shoes.
They weren’t the lastest or the most expense, but they were Nike’s just like the ones the cool kids wore.
My thoughts were on fashion when I was a kid. I did not realize how “cool” it was that I had shoes that fit.
This point was driven home when I visited a Shoes 4 the Shoeless event held at United Theological Seminary for kids enrolled in Dayton YMCA day camps and Kardio Kidz Camp, a Mustard Seed Foundation program for underprivileged children that promotes fitness.
It is not something one naturally thinks about, but ill-fitting shoes make it hard for kids to run, bike or participate in other healthy and fun activities.
Kris Horlacher, founder of Shoes 4 the Shoeless, and Shondale Atkinson of the Mustard Seed Foundation, a foster home for teen mothers and their children, showed me a photo of Bentley Byrd holding two shoes.
The blue running shoe the cute-as-pie boy arrived in looked nice enough, but they were at least two sizes too small.
“Something a 1- to 2-year-old would wear,” Atkinson said of the shoes Bentley wore that day to Kardio Kidz Camp.
The 3-year-old’s cramped feet were already becoming deformed due to the small shoes.
The other shoe — part of a pair sporty black shoes he received from Shoes 4 the Shoeless — were the right size.
Horlacher said Bentley cried when he tried on the shoes because they didn’t feel right to him — as he was used to his toes being cramped.
He was far from the only child with deforming feet fitted by the organization’s volunteers that day.
Among the others was a little girl with blisters from her patent leather Mary Janes.
Atkinson told me about a Kardio Kidz camper who showed up in snow boots last year because those were the only shoes she had to wear.
Shoes 4 the Shoeless, a referral-based, volunteer-run nonprofit that provides free shoes and socks to need Miami Valley children, outfitted that girl in gym shoes.
Horlacher estimated that there are 15,000 children in the Miami Valley wearing shoes that don’t fit properly or really worn shoes each day.
Many parents have to weigh putting food on the table or paying for housing against buying things like proper shoes for their children.
Seventeen percent of Dayton-area residents, including 39,390 children, don't have enough to eat, according to a recently released 2014 Map the Meal Gap study.
Shoes 4 the Shoeless partners with churches, schools and community agencies that help the poor.
While working on a project for homeless teens four years, Horlacher discovered what she called a tremendous unmet need for suitable shoes.
“I’ve had some awesome people come around me,” she said. “We have done 24,000 shoes in four years.”
Money for the shoes is raised from fund-raising and grant writing.
“We work with Payless and Kmart, and they sell us shoes at a reasonable price. We’ve put a lot of awesome shoes on kids,” Horlacher said.
That’s much cooler than Nikes.
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