November 27, 2008 | Read Time: 2 minutes
It started with a simple pair of canvas tennis shoes that an American missionary gave to a 9-year-old Nigerian boy in the early 1970s. As luck would have it, they fit.
More than 30 years later, that boy had become a software executive in Charlotte, N.C., and a father of four. He decided to help the world’s needy children in the way the missionary helped him. Manny Ohonme founded Samaritan’s Feet, a nonprofit organization that has given about a million pairs of new shoes to children since 2003.
In the past five years, giving to the charity has risen by about 200 percent each year. It raised $1-million in cash and $4.2-million worth of shoes in 2008. And it has received promises from companies to give more than $30-million worth of new shoes next year.
Samaritan’s Feet employs about 20 people, and relies on 700 to 1,000 volunteers to carry out its work in 42 countries each year. Though its main focus is on shoes, the charity also runs a program to teach youngsters how to run charities and creates sister relationships between American schools and overseas institutions.
Mr. Ohonme set out to help children in other countries, but he saw poverty closer to home as well. Now, 40 percent of the group’s efforts are focused on children in the United States.
Public interest in the charity grew after a college basketball coach raised awareness of the effort last year by coaching a game barefoot.
This year a donation of 100 pairs of football cleats arrived from Georgetown University, in Washington, and were promptly sent to the football team (pictured here) at one of the District of Columbia’s toughest schools: Ballou High. Ballou’s coach then followed in the footsteps of others, going barefoot for a game. More donations of new shoes poured in.
The organization is planning its first Barefoot for a Cause event for the weekend of January 17, when college and high-school coaches plan to take to the courts for a game without shoes.
Mr. Ohonme, who came to the United States on a college basketball scholarship in 1989, says that growing up in Nigeria with five brothers and two sisters, he felt blessed to have food and clothing, but shoes seemed like an unattainable luxury.
“To have a tennis shoe, that was like somebody giving you gold,” he says.
