Sole Hope - Shoe Making Party

On Saturday 10th August, 2019 Jersey, Channel Islands,  hosted a Young Living day and the theme was The Young Living Foundation. 

The Young Living Foundation supports many charities around the globe, but I decided to dedicate our YL Day to Sole Hope. 

Sole Hope is a charity in Uganda who help children and adults who have jiggers.  Jiggers are parasites that get into the soles of the feet and lay eggs which hatch and grow like little maggots.  The result is that the children can't walk, run or go to school.  Sole Hope has clinics, set up by Young Living,  where the jiggers are removed (some of the children have to stay three weeks for this be completed), and they are taught hygiene and given shoes. The children can then walk, run and play again and most importantly, return to school.  

The aim of  Shoe Making Parties is to recycle denim clothes into the uppers for shoes for the patients of the clinics. 

Here we are with the jackets and jeans we used to make the uppers. 

We got off to a slow start, but soon got into the swing of things.  Each pair of shoes needed 4 toe pieces, 4 back pieces, 2 heel pieces in denim and 2 heel pieces in strong plastic.  Chris Boudier cut the plastic pieces for us, Margaret cut the jackets and jeans into usable pieces, without seams or pockets, whilst the rest of us cut out the pieces from the pattern. 

We made 10 pairs of shoes  - toddler size.  

The uppers are then sent to the organisation headquarters in Carolina who then send them to the clinics in Uganda. 

Shoe makers then make up the shoes using old tyres for the soles of the shoes.   

$100 is sent with every 10 pairs of shoes - which we raised from the YL Day- with the help of Juanita Shield-Laignal offering mini Indian Head Massage sessions for donations, and donations from the participants of the shoe making party.

This money is to pay the shoemakers, but also to buy the equipment for them to do so, and to support the clinics and all the equipment and supplies that they need too.  

It was warm work!  We were at Holme Grown, Jersey,  on the hottest day of the year so far and it took much longer than we anticipated - but good fun was had by all and we would definitely do it again!