Students on the Capital Region BOCES Career and Technical Education Center – Albany Campus launched a BOCES-wide initiative this month to collect shoes in the region and ship them to communities living in poverty around the world.
Members of the SkillsUSA organization on the Career and Technical Education Center – Albany Campus kicked-off the “sole-full” collection this week on their own campus. They are expanding throughout the month to collect from BOCES administrative offices, the Airline Drive Academy and the Maywood Academy.
“Our goal is to collect 625 pairs of shoes, but more would be great,” said Brian Barnett, an electrical trades student from Guilderland. Barnett is Community Service Liaison for the SkillsUSA organization.
Students will collect the new and gently used shoes from collection points on a weekly basis through Feb. 16. The shoes will then be shipped to Funds2Orgs, a charitable organization that bills itself as “one of the largest multi-million-dollar nonprofits in the United States.”
Elijah Edwards, a Building Trades student from Schenectady, said the organization “collects shoe donations and provides them to small business in developing countries, including Haiti, the most impoverished nation in the Western Hemisphere. Shoes are then sold at a drastically reduced price to those living in the country.”
Edwards is afternoon session President of the SkillsUSA organization
Yet another benefit of the shoe drive is the redirection of the shoes from landfills.
“Fashion is one of the largest polluters, and by keeping these shoes out of the landfills, we are helping the environment, helping the small business owner who will sell them and helping the less fortunate who will wear them,” said Barnett.
Collections boxes will be located in every classroom, as well as the lobbies of Albany CTE, the administrative offices and the other schools. Albany CTE is located at 925B Watervliet-Shaker Road, Albany, NY, 12205 and the administrative offices are located at 900 Watervliet-Shaker Road, Albany, NY, 12205.
SkillsUSA advisor Debra Toy said the membership of the organization chose the charitable initiative because it is “something different and gets the whole community involved.”
“Partnering with this agency is allowing us to help on a much larger scale and really make an impact on the world,” Toy said.
SkillsUSA is a career and technical student organization serving more than 395,000 high school students. The organization promotes personal and professional growth and offers students the opportunity to network with industry executives and professionals at the local, regional, state and national levels and to participate in competitions. The organization also promotes giving back to the community, which locally results in collections each year for food pantries and city missions.