If you’ve ever accidentally soaked your shoes in a puddle on a freezing day, you’ll appreciate how miserable the experience can be… and how desperate you can be to get to your home, school or workplace to change into a spare pair.
When you’re living on the streets, though, it’s more than just discomfort. Cold, wet feet can quickly become agonizing to walk on – adding a big barrier to finding a job, food or shelter for the night.
And I’m going to let Kate Dugas from ChangeEverything.ca take it from here:
A few months after its launch, ChangeEverything and the people that make up the community here, made a difference in the lives of some people living on the streets of Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside with successful drive for warm clothing during a particularly bitter cold snap. Since 2006 we have used ChangeEverything.ca to collect thousands and thousands of items of warmth for folks living in the DTES of Vancouver.
Cold wet feet are a huge reason people living on the street get sick and even die in the winter. Getting clean dry socks to local shelters is a great way to help alleviate this problem. So this year we are focusing on socks!
So start looking through your closets and drawers. We’ll take mis-matched socks that are clean and in good condition. But even better, we’ll take ones that you went out and bought especially for this purpose. Reply with a comment on this post if you have leads on enormous quantities of socks, or if you just have a few pairs or even one pair to give. Each pair will totally make a difference. It’s true. Believe it.
I am also working on having a Vancity “Got Socks” account opened. Watch this space.
Kate
PS -oh and please spread the word. tweet this. add it to your facebook. emai your friends about it, heck post it to your fridge! see if your kids want to take up a collection at school for socks. whatever you can think of, the wackier the better.
Just leave a comment on her blog post to tell Kate you have socks to donate. And click here to pass the word along on Twitter!
