Hey guys and gals! Such good stuff is happening in these parts…but we sure are busy. While we’re planning distributions, awaiting the arrival of the shoes (ETA – Saturday!!) and working on our taxes due on the 15th, (there’s an extra 60 days when you live overseas) I’m also working on a little something I look forward to sharing with you soon…
I’m hoping you’ll give me some feedback and perhaps get involved!
In the meantime, if you’re the praying kind, I sure would appreciate your prayers for us over the next month. We’ll be volunteering with a local ministry called Living Hope perhaps on a daily basis for a couple of weeks, AND making sure shoes get to where they’re supposed to be — in the right sizes and quantities — over the next month. Whoo-hoo!
More soon…
I create resources to help people find deeper, more meaningful relationships with God through pursuing, pondering, and prayer. The "Shop" link above will take you to the home of many of the lovely resources I’ve created to help you keep walking one day deeper with Jesus.
Hi there – i found you on GivenGain
do you guys take second hand shoes? how does it all work?
Hi Carly, it is great to hear from you! No, we actually don’t take second hand shoes. So far, shoes for Samaritan’s Feet South Africa have come from the original Samaritan’s Feet organization back in the USA. They have received generous donations from sponsors like K-mart and Crocs, and have sent some of their shoes our way to help us get started here. The local Crocs distributors here in Gordon’s Bay are also blessing us with 1,000 pairs of shoes! People sometimes host shoe drives to collect shoes for us to distribute at their church or school, etc. as well. I am still busy filling in lots of details on our temporary website: http://www.samaritansfeetsa.wordpress.com (hoping to get a permanent .co.za url w/o wordpress in the title soon) and that might answer more of your questions…I hope this is helpful! I would love to hear more about your work in JHB. Blessings from the Cape! xCC
praying!!! 🙂
This is an incredible project. have you had much media coverage? also – may i ask why you don’t take 2nd hand shoes (just out of interest)
I would like to put your link on my facebook group and twitter as i like to draw people’s attention to amazing projects. (besides mine of course 🙂
Jo’burg Child Welfare is based in the CBD in town and we care for abused, abandoned and neglected children. we are celebrating 101 years of work this year which is a big milestone for us. At the moment, we are trying to recruit parents for adoption and foster care. with the global recession we have seen a major drop in families coming forward but at the same time the amount of children who come into our offices continues at a rate! hence the reason i am trying to raise some funds on givengain to care for the spike of children: http://www.givengain.com/cgi-bin/giga.cgi?cmd=cause_dir_cause&cause_id=2365
Have you got a mailing list
many thanks
Carly
Hi Carly, No we haven’t had much media coverage yet. We were hoping to garner a little more but as an organization we’re fairly “new in town” (congrats on 101 years!!) and we haven’t been able to make many media connections yet. But our founder from the US and my husband were on the radio in April, which was really cool!
The decision to give out new shoes was made by our parent organization (Samaritan’s Feet International) — they started out collecting gently used shoes but have progressed to raising funds and receiving donations to bless people with new ones. From what I understand, the World Health Organization does not allow used clothing to cross borders. I personally feel that it would be insulting, almost demeaning for us to try to share with people in poverty a message of hope — to say they are important and they can hope and work toward a better future, and then give them tatty second hand stuff that says “This isn’t good enough for the first world any more, but it’s good enough for you, so take it.” I would rather work hard at communicating dignity and love and respect, and I feel I would struggle to communicate those things whilst feeling like my actions (if we were giving away 2nd hand stuff) would be displaying a different message. Does that make sense?
It sounds like you are part of an amazing ministry — I hope there will be an opportunity for us to partner with you in the future. Please email me your details – we will begin sending out quarterly newsletters via email soon. If you like, my husband and I send out our own newsletter to the people who partner with us personally, and I’ll be glad to add you to that list, too.
It is great to be connected!
Blessings,
Caroline