Soles4Souls

SOURCE: http://www.bizjournals.com/nashville/stories/2010/05/03/daily16.html

Nashville-based Soles4Souls, which usually provides footwear to people in poverty-stricken countries, will deliver 20,000 pairs of shoes and work boots to area flood victims. Some are being donated directly, but others will be donated through local agencies, including the Old Hickory Community Shelter at 1050 Hadley Avenue in Old Hickory. CEO Wayne Elsey says people can volunteer and find out more about the distributions by going to www.giveshoes.org.

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Shoe People Helping the World�: Why We Do What We Do

We have a simple mission: to impact as many lives as possible
with the gift of shoes. We are partnering with charities and
governments around the world to provide a basic (yet
indispensable) gift that most of us take for granted.

You can help us in many ways: donating your own shoes,
donating cash for freight, hosting a shoe drive, or even
donating your time as a volunteer. As shoe industry
professionals, we are working hard to use the resources
at our disposal to make a difference -- but we need your
help (and your shoes) to reach out to the world.

Shoe People Helping the World�

Soles4Souls facilitates the donations of shoes, which are
used to aid the hurting worldwide. Shoe companies,
retailers, and individuals can donate footwear (both new
and used). Soles4Souls is a 501(c)3 recognized by the IRS,
and donating parties are eligible for tax advantages.

The idea behind gifts of shoes is nothing new to the Soles4Souls
team, as they coordinated relief efforts for the Asian Tsunami
and Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, netting over 900,000
pairs donated for these disasters. The team originally
operated as www.katrinashoes.org, with several churches
partnering in the collection and distribution of footwear.

How & Where We Operate:

The first region serviced by the Soles4Souls team was the
entire region affected by the Asian tsunami on December 26th,
2004. By the third week of January 2005, the team had
dispensed product to Indonesia, in conjunction with the
Indonesian ambassador based in Washington, D.C.

When Hurricane Katrina roared ashore the gulf coast of the
United States in late August 2005, the team was ready to put
its experience into action. It created a website called
KatrinaShoes.org and solicited footwear donations from company
contacts and word-of-mouth. The response was overwhelming for
our fledgling charity, and we called upon other organizations
to help distribute the amount of donated footwear that arrived.

Since the formal incorporation of Soles4Souls as a 501(c)(3)
charity on October 25th, 2006, our organization has served
people by delivering millions of pairs of shoes to the
following countries:

The United States
Mexico
Venezuela
Ecuador
Guatemala
Honduras
The Dominican Republic
Haiti
Brazil
Uganda
Sudan
Romania

We are based in Nashville, Tennessee, but our organization's
primary distribution center is based in Wadley, Alabama. New
and used footwear is received from across locations in North
America, where it is inspected for suitability, sorted by
gender and size, packaged into common Soles4Souls boxes, and
shrink-wrapped together onto a shipping pallet. There the
footwear awaits distribution to the first qualified charity
or regional partner who expresses a need.

Our Las Vegas warehouse makes it more economical for individual
donors in the western half of North America to donate their shoes
to the organization. A donor in Seattle, Washington, for example,
would save about 22% by sending the shoes to Nevada instead of
Alabama. Our warehouse in Las Vegas holds the shoes until enough
pairs have been collected to fill a shipping container. At this
point, the shoes are sent to Wadley where they are processed as
usual.

WAREHOUSE FACILITIES:

Primary Warehouse Facility: Soles4Souls, Inc.
315 Airport Road
Roanoke, AL 36274

Soles4Souls, Inc.
Foreign Trade Zone #89
6620 Escondido Street
Las Vegas, Nevada 89119