Shoes, shoes, shoes

Over the past few months, our group has witnessed an outpouring of support from the community. Our family and friends, as well as complete strangers across the country, have made donations of money and shoes -- the good that ASYV identified as a major need.

On the money front, we aimed to collect $5,000 to furnish a home for 16 youths at the village. Thanks to the incredible generosity of our family and friends, we surpassed that goal a couple weeks ago! We're still collecting money, though, and will decide after our trip where to direct the surplus funds.

Meanwhile, we reached out to people far and wide with the goal of collecting 125 pairs of shoes -- the same number of students currently at ASYV. We put ads on TuftsLife.com, fliers up around Davis Square and in churches in Somerville and sent countless messages to friends via Facebook and letters home. We also made an appeal to local shoe stores and national corporations, as well as athletes, including members of the Tufts community who recently ran this year's Boston Marathon. At home, family and friends stepped up to the challenge, and generously gave dozens of pairs of sneakers, walking shoes and sturdy sandals. And, thanks to you, we have been incredibly successful! We've collected hundreds of pairs -- way past our goal; we're still trying to get a final count. We might even have trouble getting them all to Rwanda when we go in a couple days, but we'll get them there somehow.

This week, I had the opportunity to pick up about 250 pairs of shoes from an incredible high school class in Virginia. The class, an International Relations class taught by Logan Williams at Briar Woods High School in Ashburn, Va., in February set out on an ambitious project: collecting 400,000 pairs of shoes to lay out in the National Mall in Washington, D.C., in order to raise awareness for the genocide in Darfur. They ended up collecting 30,000 pairs (!) as part of "Shoes on the Mall," and laid them out by the U.S. Capitol reflecting pool on April 26. Check out their website for more info and for photos from the Mall. Anyway, they decided to donate the shoes to charities across America; we got in contact with them, and they were able to donate 250 pairs to our cause. Thank you so much to Ms. Williams' class for your donation!



I'm really looking forward to our trip in a couple days, and, on behalf of the entire group, thank you to everyone who donated money and shoes.

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We're still accepting monetary donations! It's easy to donate, and every dollar will make a difference:

DONATE ONLINE
Go to https://www.jdc.org/donation/donate.aspx. Upon being prompted for the "purpose" of your donation, select "other" from the drop-down menu. Upon being prompted to describe "other purpose," indicate "Tufts Hillel Fundraising Project."

DONATE VIA MAIL
Checks should be made out to "JDC" with "Tufts Hillel Fundraising Project" in the memo line and mailed to: Attn: Naomi Sage, JDC, 711 Third Avenue, 10th Floor, New York, NY 10017