The 8th grade team, #PantherSquad, of Paulding Middle School will be hosting a shoe cutting party for the community to help provide materials for Ugandan shoe makers of Sole Hope. This charitable event is set to take place on Thursday, March 16 from 12:00-3:00 p.m. and 6:00-8:00 p.m.
Sole Hope is an organization that helps to put shoes on the feet of children who suffer from terrible sand fleas (called jiggers) that burrow into their feet and make it painful to walk and live a normal life. Sole Hope enlists people to use old jeans to cut out for the shoes and then ship the fabric to Uganda. Once there, they have hired shoe makers to finish the shoes. The organization also provides proper medical care to the children, making them jigger free, and gives them the shoes to stop further jigger infestation.
This is a student led fundraising event coordinated by Paulding Middle School teacher, McKayla Jackson. These 8th graders have done most everything for this date including compiling a PowerPoint presentation to share with local organizations such as Kiwanis. The committee groups that the students worked in are a publicity team, budgeting team, advertising team, and a management team.
The publicity team has been learning strategies for publicity, writing letters and sending them to the churches and inviting their youth groups, contacting newspapers, posting flyers and information around the school and community. The budgeting team has been practicing phone etiquette and contacting businesses in the community, filling out pay-slips and pay-in forms, budgeting, making deposits. They collected and processed the money and t-shirt order forms. They also are running two middle school fundraisers: iPod Day and Shoot for Cash to raise money for Sole Hope. Those chosen for the advertising team haven been in charge of creating advertising material in paper copy as well as online forms to promote the event in a variety of ways. They created all the media and print forms as well as e-mailing all students to keep them informed on the process. They also contacted Antwerp and Wayne Trace to invite them to the events. Then there is the management team which are in charge of finding and creating all materials needed for the shoe-cutting party (200+ templates for tracing, plastic pieces for shoe inserts), timing trial runs of the shoe-cutting process so they can organize and structure the event, communication between departments, and planning the overall event. They will also distribute the t-shirts. They have been using their AAA time to complete their assigned tasks.
The management team took a few minutes to reflect on the impact this event for Sole Hope will have on Paulding County.
Kaeli Bustos stated, “It would make the community come together and maybe get to know people a little bit better than you already do. I think it´s special because we are making shoes for kids who don´t have shoes and we are going to make the kids life much better if they don´t have to go through all that pain because of having a jigger.”
“I think it will get everyone more motivated to help others. It also would help us come together as a community. It doesn’t take long to do something for it and it doesn’t take much at all. You use things lying around the house you don’t use and change kids lives,” commented Gillian Porter.
Ayla Brinck said, “The special thing about Sole Hope is that it gives children who may not live in the best conditions a chance to be free of painful diseases and a chance to live a normal life. Everyone deserves that.”
Gabrielle Stallbaum agreed, “I think this will bring the community of Paulding closer. By doing this project we had to reach out to our community and ask for favors. The People of Paulding helped out so much. We got a lot of donations to help with shipping the shoes. This just shows how helpful our community and hopefully, if we do this again, we will get the same outcome.”
Andrew Adams had this to say about the impact on Paulding, “I believe that this will have a major impact on the community because it will bring them together for a good cause. If you have a disease you would expect someone to be there for you and stand by your side the whole time, these kids don’t have that feeling. so as a community i feel we should give that feeling to them.”
“It gives things to kids that dont have a lot and makes them feel as if they were worth something,” stated Kyle Harris.
There are three options for all to help with this worthy cause:
Option A:
Donate items that are needed fro Sole Hope efforts in Africa which include: large safety pins, medical gloves (all sizes), band aids (all sizes), alcohol wipes, gauze wrap, triple antibiotic/neosporin cream, child strength pain medication, medical tape, stickers for children, coloring books and crayons
Option B:
Donate a monetary amount to support the effort. Sole Hope asks for $10 per pair of shoes that we send, to support finishing of shoes and shipping costs to Africa. Contact Tyler Arend at the school if you are interested in this option, 419-399-4656 ext. 1165.
Option C:
Donate old jeans to be made into shoes for the shoe cutting party. It is asked that the jeans be clean and have minimum holes. Contact Tyler Arend if you would like to pursue this option.
To RSVP to this spectacular charitable day/evening, please contact McKayla Jackson via email at m_jackson@pauldingschools.org. If you would like more information about Sole Hope, visit their website at 222.solehope.org
