Shoe Drive helps others' soles

Let somebody take a walk in your shoes for once.

For the next week, Keep Hall Beautiful along with other member organizations of the Georgia Recycling Coalition will collect gently worn shoes for a nonprofit organization that will distribute the shoes to people in need across the world.

Until Nov. 15, county residents can drop off their gently worn shoes at one of 10 locations across the county.

At the end of the drive next week, the shoes will be donated to Soles4Souls, a Nashville-based nonprofit that got its start in 2004 collecting shoes for victims of the tsunami in Southeast Asia. Since then, the organization has donated more than 5 million shoes to people across the world, according to the Soles 4Souls 2008 annual report.

Already, a number of shoes have been collected at local churches and nonprofit luncheons for the cause, said Hall County Resource Coordinator Rick Foote.

"I’ve requested two pick-ups, one at ... First United Methodist on Thompson Bridge, because the pastor that is my contact there said, ‘the boxes are flowing over, help!,’" Foote said.

The local effort serves two purposes: it reduces waste in the Hall County landfill and it provides shoes to people to need.

The shoes that cannot be distributed will be recycled — reducing the number of shoes that end up in landfills across the world, according to a news release from the Georgia Recycling Coalition.

Once the shoes are taken to the Nashville-based Soles4Souls, they will be distributed in one of 125 countries around the world, according to a news release from the Georgia Recycling Coalition.

"This initiative will not only help put shoes on the feet of those in need, but it also furthers the global effort to reuse," said Wayne Elsey, founder and chief executive officer of Soles4Souls, Inc.