Published: June 16, 2008 10:01 am      

Shoes welcome in Westville

Woman organizes donation drive at library

WESTVILLE — Mounds of shoes are piling up in the home of Marla Mackiewicz, and she couldn’t be happier about it.

Mackiewicz is the initiator and organizer of a Soles4Souls shoe drive that will take place Saturday at the Westville Public Library.

She has been accepting donations of shoes for the drive throughout the entire month of June, as people have heard about it by word of mouth. She already had collected 204 pairs last week.

“It’s amazing,” said Mackiewicz, who is storing the shoes in her dining room. “It’s hard to imagine what 204 pairs of shoes look like.”

Mackiewicz said she heard about the Soles4Souls organization one day while watching a television show and was impressed.

“I was just amazed at what this organization was doing,” Mackiewicz said.

Soles4Souls is a nonprofit organization that facilitates the donations of both new and gently worn shoes. All donations, whether in shoe form or monetary, are tax deductible. They have distributed more than three million pairs of shoes since Janu-ary 2005.

Shoes donated to the group go to people affected by natural disasters such as hurricanes, earthquakes, floods or tornadoes, both nationally and internationally. Other recipients include women’s domestic abuse shelters, homeless shelters, summer camps for disadvantaged children and inner city hospitals.

Mackiewicz said that all shoes are welcome on Saturday as well as monetary donations to help defray the costs of shipping the footwear to the distribution facility. The organization has four warehouses across the country located in Alabama, Tennes-see, Nevada and Virginia.

“I’m telling everybody any size and any style would be wonderful,” Mackiewicz said.

Those who donate shoes at the library on Saturday will receive a ticket to be entered into a drawing for prizes that have been given by many local businesses.

Latoz Hardware, Avenue Broadband, Body Benders, Casey’s General Store and John Nelk of the Barber Shop, all of Westville; and Taco Bell and Red Wing Shoes of Danville have donated gifts for the drawing.

Ken Burkhamer, owner of Red Wing Shoes with wife Diane, donated more than 50 pairs to the cause. He said the Soles4Souls group is very well known within the shoe industry.

“They have pretty good exposure within the shoe retail trades,” Burkhamer said. “This is an up-and-up organization.”

Burkhamer said the new shoes he donated were mostly women’s casual shoes. He said the donation of shoes is so important in many different situations, such as when a woman has to leave a domestic abuse situation and she only has time to grab her purse.

“She has to rebuild her wardrobe from the ground up,” Burkhamer said.

He also said many times in disasters shoes are the first things that are lost or swept away.

“The thing that people fail to realize is when you have a natural disaster is the injuries that occur to the feet,” Burkhamer said.

Whatever financial donations don’t cover for the shipping of the shoes, Mackiewicz said she will be donating herself. She said she already has surpassed her original goal of 170 pairs and plans to hold more drives in the future.

“I just wanted to do this,” Mackiewicz said. “I just love doing philanthropic activities, and this is one I feel very passionate about.”

Burkhamer encouraged the community to get involved in the drive.

“It’s a good place to put their shoes, to give them to an organization that can get them to the people who need them.”

FYI

The Soles4Souls shoe donation drive will take place from 9:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. Saturday at the Westville Public Library, 233 S. State St. Shoes can be dropped off there or a monetary donation may be given to go toward shipping the shoes. For more information, contact Marla Mackiewicz at 267-3025 or visit http://www.soles4souls.org.