Anne Watson Elementary School counselor Julianne Yeatman often sees students with holes in their shoes or the soles coming apart, but they can get new shoes twice a year, thanks to a Conway church.
Grace United Methodist Church, 1075 Hogan Lane, started the Bigelow Shoe Drive several years ago, said the Rev. Kathleen McMurray, who is coordinating the project this year.
“We are so thankful and grateful, and I don’t know what we’d do without Grace [United] Methodist,” Yeatman said.
McMurray said about 40 students receive shoes and socks each year through the outreach project. Monetary donations are received, and the church partners with Shoe Carnival in Conway, which gives the project a discount on the shoes. Grace church members also donate socks.
This year, 46 prekindergartners through sixth-graders will benefit from the effort, Yeatman said.
“I send an email to teachers asking them if they see any student who has shoes that are in bad shape or don’t seem to fit,” Yeatman said. “We have several families in need. I already have a list of students who I know their families need help financially.”
The East End School District’s elementary school has about 63 percent of its students on free or reduced-price lunches.
This year, Wye Mountain United Methodist Church is partnering with Grace United Methodist on the shoe drive.
Yeatman said a staff member of the Wye Mountain church expressed an interest in helping the students, and she suggested the two churches partner.
“I’ve been measuring little feet all week,” Yeatman said. The shoe store provided the sizer, she said, which she keeps in her office. “Some kids don’t realize what a good fitting is — they’ve been given shoes from an older brother or something.”
McMurray said Yeatman gets together a list of sizes and genders for the children, and any specifics.
“Some of the children can’t tie their shoes, yet,” McMurray said.
Yeatman said the church provides shoes and socks in the fall and spring.
“For the fall, our thoughts were, get them a really good pair of tennis shoes for the school year, and then in May; that way the kiddos will have some summer shoes to wear to play in,” Yeatman said. “They are super nice — there are Nike and New Balance and Adidas.”
McMurray said the sizes and information are passed along to the church’s contact at the shoe store. He gets the shoes picked out and ready, she said, and church employees go make sure the list has been met.
Youth and children at Grace UMC organize the shoes, as well as the socks that many of the church children picked out with their parents.
“They might say, ‘I like to wear these, so this other first-grader might like these,” McMurray said.
“We really want to involve the whole congregation and make it a mission for the whole church,” she said. “We have a day, and we bring some of our church members who are either retired or in college or have flexible schedules, and we go and put the shoes on the students’ feet. It’s incredible. Some kids are so outgoing. They get so excited, and their faces just light up. One little boy, he put them on and said, ‘Now, I can run really fast!’”
Yeatman echoed the pastor’s comments. “Our students love it; their faces just light up,” she said.
Maddie McDonald, 18, whose father, the Rev. Mark McDonald, is the pastor of Grace United Methodist Church, went in the fall to help deliver shoes to the elementary school.
“We were in the counselor’s office, and she brought in a couple of kids at a time,” McDonald said. “We washed their feet and then put on the new socks and shoes; it was beautiful.”
She said it is obvious that some children rely on the Grace project because the shoes they had on were falling apart. McDonald said she remembers the look of “gratitude and appreciation” on the students’ faces.
“You could just see in their eyes how much it meant that we were there to do that for them,” she said.
McMurray said leftover money from the project is put into the general mission fund that provides resources for other projects throughout the year.
“We have just a ton, a ton of outreach programs we do during the year,” McMurray said.
Senior writer Tammy Keith can be reached at (501) 327-0370 or tkeith@arkansasonline.com.