June 9, 2008
WASHINGTON, D.C. - Second year Director of Equipment and Transportation Lynn Newton was faced with a dilemma. The surplus of athletic shoes, ranging from football and soccer cleats to basketball and track shoes, lined storage sheds near McDonough Gym in large enough quantities to make it difficult to find room for anything else.
"Coach Thompson had donated items to the Boys & Girls Club of D.C. and we had donated old uniforms and shorts to servicemen overseas," Newton said. "But we had so much stuff that had just piled up over the years."
One evening, a solution to Newton's storage problem flashed before her eyes. ESPN's "Outside The Lines" ran a feature story about Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis' head basketball coach Ron Hunter, who had made National headlines for going barefoot during a game in January to promote an organization called Samaritan's Feet. The organization's goal of collecting sneakers for impoverished children matched Newton's goal of unloading sneakers saw a way to not only solve her storage issue, but aide a worthy cause.
After taking some time to research the organization, she contacted members of Samaritan's Feet to see if they would be interested in the surplus athletic shoes.
Close to 500 boxes of sneakers were donated to Samaritan's Feet by the Georgetown Athletics Department, with sneakers reaching as far as Nigeria and as close to home as Washington, D.C. While helping de-clutter storage areas, Newton was also touched by the amount of good the donations were doing for less fortunate.
A large part of our mission at Georgetown is to instill a sense of goodwill in our students toward the broader community," Georgetown University Athletic Director Bernard Muir said. "The leadership role that Lynn has taken in partnering with a worthy cause like Samaritan's Feet has been exceptional and is the type of example we strive to set for our administrators, coaches and student-athletes. We are quite proud of this association."
Samaritan's Feet was founded in 2003 by Emmanuel Ohonme, but the origins of the foundation have much deeper roots. Ohonme grew up in poverty-stricken Lagos, Nigeria where at nine years-old he was given his first pair of tennis shoes and the opportunity to compete in competitive sports. The hope provided by a simple pair of tennis shoes was the catalyst for Ohonme to come to America on a basketball scholarship and receive an education. Today, his organization strives to give impoverished children the same chance he was once given.
"Samaritan's Feet is a part of paying something forward that has been done for me," Ohonme related. "I was a poor African boy in Nigeria when a missionary came to my country to do a camp. I was one of the fortunate ones to get a pair of shoes and learn basketball...In many countries around the world, these kids grow up in poverty and can't go to school without shoes. In some places, it's for health reasons. A simple cut or scrape can be the cause of having toes or feet missing."
The mission set forth by the organization is "to equip 10 million impoverished children with 10 million shoes in 10 years." Five years into the program they have collected 750,000 pairs of shoes, but donations, including the one by Georgetown University, have been on the rise.
"Georgetown's donation was such a blessing," Ohonme said. "To us, a pair of shoes is a vehicle to bring hope to a child. Many of these kids see a world filled with poverty and come from families that live on a dollar a day, we're taking these kids a dream."
"It's crazy because you see these videos of doctors going into these countries and cleaning off children's feet and putting a pair of shoes on them," Newton said. "In some places it's the difference between whether they can go to school or not. It makes you want to say, can I go with you to help."
Georgetown and Samaritan's Feet hope to continue their relationship, as the organization looks to close in on its goal. But shoe donations are not necessarily the only way the University will be able to help. Samaritan's Feet organizers hope to convince college and high school basketball coaches around the country to participate in a nationwide effort to coach a game barefoot.
Samaritan's Feet looks for help in many different ways. Individuals or organizations can get involved by emailing info@samaritansfeet.org or calling 866-833-SHOE to find out how to aid the worldwide cause.
