More than 1K shoe pairs donated to Greenville County students | Greenville News

GREENVILLE — Far more than 1,000 learners in Greenville County public educational institutions will obtain new footwear for the holiday seasons thanks to a donation from a area business.

Xmas Footwear, a nonprofit Christian ministry based in Greer, has donated 1,047 pairs of sneakers to the college district to distribute to little ones in will need. They were shipped to the district on Dec. 13, where staff members sorted them to be taken to each individual school.

This is the eighth calendar year of the partnership concerning the nonprofit and the district.

“Every child wants some thing good,” mentioned Irene Hamilton Jones, who sales opportunities a district effort and hard work to support households beat homelessness. “I haven’t met a single child who doesn’t.”

Hamilton Jones runs the district’s McKinney-Vento job, a federally sanctioned program that offers sources to pupils and families who are going through homelessness. This consists of persons who are “doubled up” with good friends or family members, staying in a resort, in unexpected emergency shelters or are unsheltered on the street.

So considerably this university yr, there are extra than 900 pupils going through homelessness, and typically 1,200 to 1,300 by the finish of every university 12 months, Hamilton Jones explained. That number has more than doubled given that the 2011-12 faculty calendar year.

The footwear will go to aid individuals learners as nicely as other individuals whose households have faced hardship but might not be going through homelessness.

Every single student who receives sneakers will also obtain a toothbrush, toothpaste, socks and a modest ebook “about Jesus and Christmas,” reported Cheryl Carpenter, who began Xmas Footwear in 1996. Her dad grew up in Greenville, and her dad reported he did not have new sneakers when he was a little one. 

“There’s a lot of minor young children just like my dad, and we want to make guaranteed that they have a new pair of sneakers,” Carpenter mentioned. “It’s awesome what a minimal pair of footwear can do for a child’s individuality that working day since it builds self esteem.”

Although they started with a concentration on the winter season holiday getaway time, the firm distributes footwear all through the year to schools throughout Greenville, Pickens and Spartanburg counties.

A single time, a college counselor requested a dimensions 10 pair from Christmas Shoes, reported Tanja Faulkenberry, who will work with Carpenter. When they delivered the shoes, the counselor began crying. The scholar had been going for walks with a limp mainly because his sneakers were a dimension 8.

The shoe gathering system begins each and every calendar year in August, when Hamilton Jones compiles a list of pupils who need to have footwear and shares it with the nonprofit.

Then, Christmas Sneakers purchases pairs for a lower price at Shoe Carnival, and they enlist enterprises that order 50 to 100 pairs on their possess. They then coordinate with the Boiling Springs Hearth Office to deliver the footwear to the district.

Abide by Spencer Donovan on Twitter @sdonovan5.