Soles4Souls by Madison

Soles4Souls by Madison - April 2022 Scholarship Essay

A volunteer experience that I have been involved in is Soles4Souls. For the past six years I have done a shoe drive with and without my sister. My sister, Melissa Champion, started collecting shoes for Soles4Souls her freshman year of high school in FBLA. When she first started doing the shoe drive I only helped her count shoes. When she graduated, I took on all of the responsibilities of running a shoe drive. I communicate with businesses in Harris County, Columbus, Fort Benning, and Alabama to help host shoe boxes. The businesses that help us collect shoes get free advertising on Facebook, the radio, TV news channels, and in the newspaper. These shoe boxes make it more convenient for me to pick up shoes and for others who are looking to donate. Once the boxes are full, I pick up the bags of shoes and take them to my garage to pair, count, and package into boxes. When my garage is full of boxes, I then take them to a storage unit where they are held until the end of the drive.
For last year’s shoe drive I had a goal of 10,000 pairs of shoes to collect; I only got around 7,000 pairs. So starting the drive back up this year, I kept my same goal of 10,000 and as of right now I have around 3,000 pairs of shoes. We also take monetary donations, each dollar counts as one pair of shoes. I normally do the drive for three months and as of right now we are two months in. In the past two years that I have done the shoe drive by myself, I have met so many wonderful people. Now that I'm graduating and this is my last year doing this, I have realized that a part of me is going to miss it. I’m going to miss the people that I have met from it and all the new friendly faces. If I learned a lesson from this volunteer experience, it would be to always help others because you do benefit from it. I have gained new relationships and helped provide people in the United States and other countries with new shoes.