Our Story…a note from the founder....
Have you ever had something tug at your heart over and over? You think you do something about it so you can check it off your list but it keeps coming back. You’ve gone on mission trips “to help” but you come back and wonder….did I actually help anyone or is this somehow selfish? The feelings continue and you realize that maybe it’s a mid-life crisis. It can’
t be that bad…you’re not buying a Corvette, you’re just wanting to make a difference. So you quit your job and volunteer your time to your favorite organizations while looking for a full-time way to do this. After more time goes by, you realize that maybe this really isn’t a mid-life crisis….it’s a mid-life calling. Doors close that devastate you but it’s the opening windows and new opportunities that make you see that although it sounds cliché, you really can do something to make a difference. From the passion knowing that one person can make a difference. After spending one week per year in a village in Guatemala, you feel like you want to do something more but you have time and financial barriers. What can you do? You come home and struggle with how do I tell this to my friends and family and our first world problems? How can I get someone to understand when they haven’t seen it first hand? This is the biggest challenge….to get YOU to care and to get YOU to do something. If I could, I would take every person reading this to one of these small villages in the developing world. A place where there’s no water, no food, no electricity, no sanitation. I would take you there for one week. When you come home, that’s when YOU decide….does life just go on, or does life go on in a whole new way? YOU begin to struggle with how to tell people. Part of it is about education….educating people of what’s going on outside of their own little world. I often wonder why the media doesn’t pick up on the fact that 22,000 children die in the world every single day from poverty related causes. How do we go about this? That is one of the goals of Shoes & Hope. For now, we can share stories and photographs from our friends in these countries. This comes with a challenge! Whether you come on this journey with me and get to know the people of Guatemala and Belize, or whether it’s just getting to know people struggling in your own community through some of our partner organizations, it will change your life.
