Our Charity Work

Stepping into the Shoes of Children in Poverty

Every year, more than 80 million African children are born into poverty. By 2030, African children will account for more than half of the world's poor.

Meanwhile, 300 million shoes in the UK endup in landfill each year. So, together with the charity Educate the Kids, we launched a campaign to collect unused children's shoes in Bristol, and take these shoes to children at the Jolaurabi School in in Kenya.

In January 2018, we set off to Kenya with 15 suitcases full of shoes. Once we settled in, we started to work. Fitting 300 children with pairs of shoes is quite a job!

But there are more children at the school, more shoes to fit. So we were eager to return. But to get more shoes, we needed to think bigger. So together with Educate the kids we invited the Jolaurabi choir, also known as the Singing Children of Africa, to do a big sing-off with our local school.

We raised more than £2,500 and got a lot of attention for our project. And then Covid hit. Our plans to go back came to an abrupt halt. But the Educate the kids charity kept on supporting our friends in Kenya with food for the families and salary for the teachers.

As soon as the world opened up again we started preparations to go back. With more suitcases and more volunteers. We were well prepared this time. We caught up with old friends. And soon we started measuring and fitting.

Since 2018, we fitted two and a half thousand children with shoes, and found 40 sponsors, sponsoring 50 children. And there’s so much more to come.