Carlow pupils send thousands of shoes to kids in South Africa
Ballymurphy NS pupils Rebecca, David and Aidan McGee who, along with their school mates, collected runners
SCHOOL children from Co Carlow, including those in Askea GNS and Ballymurphy NS, collected thousands of shoes, which are now winging their way to children in South Africa.
The pre-loved shoes and runners were donated to a charity called Our Shoes, which was started when Sligo man Ciaran McHugh decided to do something about the poverty in the South African townships.
He set up the organisation in 2019 alongside Kevin Grant and Geoff Lockwood after they visited the Khayelitsha township in Cape Town, home to 2.4 million people.
Our Shoes ran two pilot appeals which saw the donation of 15,000 pairs of sports shoes which had outlived their intended use in Ireland, but which still have lots of life left in them. They then knew this needed to carry on and so set up the charity.
Ciaran, Kevin and Geoff had seen first-hand the difficulties the township children went through, even just to go to school.
They realised that shoes in an African township are more than just to protect their feet – they also enabled the youngsters to get to school.
The three founding charity members firmly believe in the empowerment that education brings, so they were determined to help the impoverished children.
Carlow schools were eager to help and joined the nationwide campaign that this year collected over 25,000 sports shoes for the charity.
It was a great opportunity in schools to show the children that doing something simple can have a huge impact in helping others.
If you'd like to know more about the Our Shoes charity or would like to organise a donation of shoes, go to their website at ourshoes.ie for more details.
