August Fare For All distribution to include shoes

by Cori Hilsgen

news@thenewsleaders.com

The Fare For All distribution, which will be held at the Resurrection Lutheran Church in St. Joseph on Monday, Aug. 15, will include shoes.

“Good in the Hood,” a local nonprofit and hunger-relief organization, which began a “Shoe Away Hunger” initiative in 2012, will be distributing the shoes, along with Fare For All volunteers.

FFA Program Manager Scott Weatherhead said this nonprofit is similar to FFA because it’s also open to everyone with no qualifications or signups. Profits from the program help fight hunger.

Initially, the Shoe Bus organizers felt it was too far to travel, but Weatherhead convinced them it would be worth their while.

“Your volunteers are awesome, and that is what they will need if we are to pull off the perfect outdoor sale,” he said.

Weatherhead said Good in the Hood will provide a few volunteers, including a driver, but they look at St. Joseph as the perfect chance to test a new pilot program where they will have several FFA volunteers help with the sale. He is hoping for an extra five to eight FFA volunteers to help out.

After purchasing August Fare For All food distribution products, customers can visit the Shoe Bus. Cash or credit-card payments will be accepted for shoes.

Many pairs of shoes will be displayed on a school bus that has been converted into a mobile shoe store.

Shoes of all sizes will be offered on the bus to shoppers for a suggested donation price of $5 per adult pair and $2 for toddler pairs, with a limit of 10 pairs.

“We plan to move a lot of shoes on tables outside in the parking lot,” Weatherhead said. “The numbers are so great in St. Joseph we need to make this a good customer-service experience, so the bus doesn’t get too backed up.”

The initiative helps provide new and gently used footwear at affordable costs. The purpose of the program is to help people stretch their grocery budgets, be able to purchase affordable footwear and to use the proceeds to help pay for groceries to be distributed at their local food shelves.

Shoes for the program are dropped off at Schuler Shoes store locations, which sponsors the bus and accepts donations. Most of the shoes are not direct donations from Schuler Shoes but are gently used shoes which have been donated by others through shoe drives and collections hosted by Good in the Hood through churches, businesses, schools, civic organizations and more.

“Only the shoes in the best condition make it on the Shoe Bus,” Weatherhead said.

According to Good in the Hood information, they are able to feed one person up to seven days of essential groceries for each pair of shoes sold.

The August FFA distribution will include Pub Burgers and variety packages of bacon.

Organizer Amanda Roles said recent FFA numbers have continued to be good. June results showed FFA sold 421 packages and served 322 households, and in July FFA sold 322 packages and served 226 households.

Holdingford members Deb Disher and Peggy Anderson have started a satellite site. They gather orders from Holdingford residents, purchase food products from the St. Joseph FFA distribution and then bring the products back to Holdingford and distribute them from a church there. They served about 60 households in June and 42 families in July. The Melrose site served 12 families in July.

“We are still hoping for a satellite sight to start up in Cold Spring,” Roles said. “Thank you to all of our volunteers (who) helped out at the distribution (last month) and made it run very smoothly.”

Roles said if anyone knows of someone who would be interested in starting up a satellite site in the Cold Spring and Richmond area, they should contact her at rolesamanda@gmail.com for more information.

Future FFA distributions include Sept. 19, Oct. 17, Nov. 14 and Dec. 12.

For more information, visit goodinthehood.org/Our-Programs/Shoe-Away-Hunger or fareforall.org.