One Day Without Shoes

Today is TOMS' "One Day Without Shoes" and I am proud to be a supporter of it!! If you don't know what TOMS is, check out their website here. But to make a long story short, TOMS is a shoe company that sells some pretty unique shoes. For each pair of shoes you buy, they send a pair to a child in need. They call this their "One for One" movement. It's a really great cause and has helped many children in countries like Argentina, Ethiopia, South Africa, and even the United States.

But anyway, getting to today!! TOMS created this "One Day Without Shoes" in order to spread awareness for the cause and the impact just a pair of shoes can have on a child's life. To me, this day is to also realize the importance of owning a pair of shoes - or in our case, way more than one pair. Here are some facts straight from the TOMS website:

* In some developing nations, children must walk for miles to school, clean water and to seek medical help.
* Cuts and sores on feet can lead to serious infection.
* Often, children cannot attend school barefoot.
* In Ethiopia, approximately one million people are suffering from Podoconiosis, a debilitating and disfiguring disease caused by walking barefoot in volcanic soil.
* Podoconiosis is 100% preventable with basic foot hygiene and wearing shoes.




The point is to go the day barefoot. Maybe you can't go the WHOLE day, but you can definitely try for a few hours, just a few minutes, or even a few seconds. A bunch of us at school today tried to support the cause, and the administration shut us down pretty darn quickly. But fortunately, I (and I think a few others) were able to kick our shoes off in a few classes when no one was looking :)

In my eyes, a day like this is the start. Just the beginning. It's the beginning to a change and a movement that will hopefully spread across the nation and across the world. We have the power to send people a message, anyone does. All you really have to do is believe in something with all of you, everything in you, your whole heart. Once you have that full belief, you just have to find a way to spread it (in a loving way of course). I mean think about it, how many crazy looks do you think I got at school during the moments when I was barefoot? And how many people do you think asked me what I was doing? Let's just say more than a few. When you do something like that, when you stand up for something, and be a part of a movement, people ask. People want to know why you're CHOOSING to go barefoot.

This really made me think (again) about how much power we really do have. We just have power in our voice. It makes me think about how many different causes there are out there. It makes me think about how many things we can be a part of - whether we start them or whether we just begin to follow the movement. It makes me think of how big this world and how small I am.

It makes me think of the song "I Need to Wake Up" by Melissa Etheridge. Although this song was in the movie "An Inconvenient Truth" (I think...I haven't seen it so I wouldn't really know), that's not where my point is going. The lyrics in this song really speak the truth. The one line I want to share that goes well with all of this is "I need to speak out, something's got to break up. I've been asleep and I need to wake up now."

It's as simple as that. Speaking out doesn't always mean using your voice either. I believe you can speak out with actions. Don't forget that saying, "Actions speak louder than words." We can speak out in silence. We can speak out in so many different ways.

There are so many ways we can help the world and so many things we can do to try to make it better. They can be small or big. Either way, let's start. Say with...going barefoot?

photo via TOMS site