In our school, every year, we hold a not-so-voluntary VOLUNTARY SERVICE DAY. On this day, all students are required to participate in the school's shoe-coloring-project.

 

To begin with, everyone is given a clean white pair of white sneakers. The students are to draw creative pictures and color the sneakers with marker pens. All students have a nice time socializing and doing artwork in the process.

 

Some students volunteer to do two or three pair of sneakers. It is quite tricky because you have to color 2 whole sneakers for one pair, so for two pairs, you have to color 4 sneakers.

 

Last year, I volunteered for 2 pairs and had a hard time finishing the job. One student made a school record of volunteering 5 pairs of shoes.

 

So why do we do this? After decorating all the shoes, they are sent to poverty-stricken regions around the world. In many countries, young children run around barefoot because they cannot afford to buy shoes, not even sandals.

 

The landscape is extremely rigid and severe, so these children have to simply adapt to the harsh environment.

 

 

Often, many of them are exposed to germs and get hurt from the rocks. They must walk miles and miles to reach their schools, and come all the way back home.

 

Only a few children have the privilege of wearing sandals, and only one child has a pair of sneakers. The child is proud of himslef, but his sneakers are still oversized. The rest of the students do not have any shoes on.

 

In order to help these children, our school sends the sneakers to these countries. Even if we send shoes, however, many families sell them because they need money for their living.

 

Many of them do not fully understand the dire need for these shoes.

 

 

To prevent this, we draw pictures on the clean white sneakers to avoid black-market trade and the shoes being sold as products.

 

Drawing and coloring also has an artistic value to it, sending the children a gift along with the normal mundane shoes.

It shows our passion towards them.

 

 

 

Coloring and drawing on shoes is helpful for reducing poverty, but also benefits the environment. Sometimes, people buy shoes and forget about them, or buy multiple shoes of similar designs.

 

 

Other shoes get old and dirty over time, so many throw them away instead of wearing them again and again. In order to prevent this from happening, we can put our own artistic values into our shoes and recreate them.

 

This does not only work with shoes, but all the other everyday products that we use. If we look around, there are an infinity everyday objects, like clothes and overused materials that can be used in different methods. Trash isn't trash. It's just something ready to become something new.

 

 

 

 

 

Picture of the sneakers that I made.