Welcome to my Shoe4Africa 2024 fundraiser page. I am glad you found it.

And while you probably have read lots of requests for funds for all types or worthy causes let me briefly explain; why this is a unique and truly genuine project. Here just the bullet points but read on please.

• One idealistic, some say crazy, person who ran [pun] with an idea once he saw the need.
• Grassroots funding started in late 2000s, no NGO, no Western Good-Doer bloated organization.
• In 2015 first, to date largest (200 bed) existing public children’s hospital in Sub-Saharan Africa opened.
• Idea, construction and opening were all 100% privately, grassroots funded by people like you.
• Soon to be opened is Africa’s first Pediatric Children’s Cancer hospital, 152 beds twice the size of St Jude’s Hospital in the US.
• One staff member paid in the USA, and 100% Africans hired for all projects.
• All medical facilities are run by and with local expertise and serve as teaching venues for the Moi Teaching and Referral Hospitals College of Medicine.

I have been flying the flag for Shoe4Africa at all my races for the last 10+ years. I am a physician and most of my family lives in Central and Southern Africa. While there are plenty of humanitarian aid projects with great intentions conceived in the Western World they often are plagued by the same drawbacks. Bloated organizations, where only a fraction of raised funds go into the projects. Advisers that are flown in on Business Class seats and chauffeured in climate-controlled Land Rovers and finally projects that when they come to pass have no viability without continuous support from abroad. There is often a lack of Know-How transfer. This leads to a continuum of dependency by the target population and often achieves nothing then a quick feel-good moment for the donor.

Shoe4Africa has shown that self-reliant projects are possible. I have seen it with my own eyes, I have been there, I vouch for it.

Please donate as much as you see fit. No amount is too small.

Thank you, Asante Sana

Jean-Pierre