was founded in 2016 by Rayvn Boi-Bootblack, Amanda Porter and Heather Kerns. Over the several years I (Rayvn) have been in the Leather Kink, B**M community and I have discovered a downward trend of bootblacks participating in community and at events in my local area. Also, I continually observed the frustration of the larger community trying to help charities in need! My huge heart (that everyone
knows I wear on my sleeve) was about to burst trying to figure out how, I could help. With encouragement from my Sirs I approached Amanda and Heather with the Idea of bootblacks coming together to be apart of something bigger than ourselves and do what we love in the process! Also, thanks to our love of leather and EVERYTHING KINKY, we receive items for auction at events, thanks to the Event coordinators for their generosity and kindness for letting us do so! With some brainstorming over coffee, we came up with COMMUNITY S.O.L.E. (service, outreach, leather, equality). Those words have become more powerful than I had ever imagined. It encumpasses all that our community tries to carry forward through :
COMMUNITY SERVICE
COMMUNITY OUTREACH
COMMUNITY LEATHER/FETISH/KINK ETC. (the list is too long!!!)
COMMUNITY EQUALITY
Our hope is that bootblacks of all communities who are attending events will sign up to bootblack for an hour or so to help raise funds for the charity of that rotation (6 months) or donate items to auction off!!! With our first year under way we partnered with events, such as FPE, FLS/b-CBB, FLFP and raised several hundred dollars for our charity at that time, and they were able to get on their feet and do what they do best! During our future runs we will be partnering again with events to continue to bring bootblacking to their events and educate the community about why our charity needs their support and bring this community closer through charities we and the community choose. Thank you, to EVERYONE that has helped us on our journey to improving the world we live in, one charity at a time.
