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Shoes and Shoe 4 Africa

Shoe donations to:

Shoe4Africa Children’s Hospital
PO BOX 3, Nandi Road
Eldoret, 30100

Shoe 4 Africa was named after an incident; one lost shoe in Africa, on Dec 29th, 1999.

Although shoes were a large part of Shoe4Africa, they were not the only part… Shoe4Africa was a step forward (a shoe as a symbol) out of poverty, a way of transposing you from here to a there. We had many projects going on and shoes were one of them. Addressing hookworm through giving shoes was a major project as seen here in our drive for Shoes to give out in Kibera. We gave out 12,000 pairs and had 5,000 women gather at Kibera Primary School – probably the largest ever gathering of women-only in one place in Kenya’s history! Certainly the largest women’s-only running race ever. Here is our video for the shoe collection in Kibera with a soundtrack provided by the Marathon World Champion, Douglas Wakiihuri. https//www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBQcMbU3Z6w

The event itself was crazy, and can be seen here…

However, in 2016 we read that the East African Governments were united that they wished to stop the import of secondhand clothes by 2019 to give the local tailors a chance to succeed in a highly competitive market.
With thousands of tons of s/hand clothes flooding in to East Africa many tailors abandoned the trade. However the livelihood of numerous folks in East Africa, and a huge industry, sent out a backlash that more jobs would be lost.

Therefore there was a huge hike in raising import taxes for secondhand goods which undoubtedly was a boon to any government. For example, we used to pay $1 or $2 for each pair of shoes we imported into Kenya, which we felt was reasonable (typically we held events giving out 1,000 plus pairs) but when this number leapt up to $10 per shoe in 2016 we took the hint.

Right now there is a dire need of quality second hand running shoes for the massive amount of people wishing to be runners in Kenya and no factory in Kenya making shoes.

One company is currently trying, making the shoes in the far east and assembling the final product in Kenya, another company is looking to start a fitness shoe – but truth be told the nike, the adidas, the asics, and the new balances won’t be replaced in the next decade. Sadly (Running) Shoes are included in the secondhand clothes docket therefore the local runners are forced to pay higher prices for running shoes.

Therefore, we are dramatically scaling back as we want to be as supportive as possible to the Kenyan Government and be compliant with their wishes – thus we will no longer import large amounts of running shoes.

We will place more focus on helping with health and education projects. Sending one pair of shoes to Kenya now costs $10 in postage and almost the same amount in import tax*; more expensive than buying a shoe in Kenya. $11 will buy a new desk for a child at one of our schools, or vital medicines at our hospital… thus our focus has shifted.

*Taxes are high for s/hand goods as the country is trying to move away from the imports of so much s/hand goods.

	26 USD 50 USD 100 USD
26 USD 50 USD 100 USD