Style your sole: Students buy shoes for a good cause

Communications sophomore Kelsey Fisher likes hers off-white with vibrant cyan and magenta swirls. Aerospace engineering senior Dominic Surano likes his olive-colored with black celestial ornaments and physics junior Andrew Shaw likes his plain.

Although this may sound like something from a new-age frozen yogurt shop, these students were actually decorating recently purchased shoes during Raise the Respect’s Style Your Sole, an event for TOMS shoes, which took place in the University Union from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Monday.

For every pair of shoes purchased, TOMS donates a pair of shoes to people in need.

The canvas, closed-toed shoes are light-weight and include a leather insole, a rubber sole and are available in red, black, white and olive. Students who purchased a pair today were able to decorate it using neon-colored paint provided by TOMS.

According to Joanna Greenbaum, TOMS representative and business marketing senior, TOMS is doing more than just selling a product. The company, which entered the market in 2006, has donated more than 60,000 shoes to people in South America and South Africa.

Greenbaum thinks that the TOMS strategy differs from other charitable organizations because the company doesn’t just donate a random number of shoes and start a new project. Instead, the company sets a goal and won’t progress until that goal is achieved.

“This is the main priority and it won’t change,” Greenbaum said. “It’s not like we’re trying to do this for PR.”

The company has met its quotas of 10,000 and 50,000 shoes for its first two shoe drops, respectively. Its current efforts are focused in Ethiopia and the hurricane-affected states of Florida and Mississippi. The goal is to donate 200,000 shoes to these locations.

“I think the program is cool and I really like the shoes because they’re comfy,” said Surano, who purchased his third pair of TOMS shoes on Monday. “They’re kind of like little ninja slippers.”

The approach is relatively hands-off and hassle-free for consumers, according to Surano.

“TOMS makes it so efficient and easy to do philanthropy,” he said.

Raise the Respect, the Cal Poly club that strives to educate students about social inadequacies, sponsored the event.

“Raise the Respect is a volunteer organization dedicated to informing the student body about various social injustices and when Joanna talked to me about the cause, it definitely fit in with our purpose and our mission,” said Ken Mangalindan, Raise the Respect’s volunteer director and biology senior.

Shaw, who purchased his first pair during Monday’s event, had heard about the company through his friends but had never made a purchase.

“They’re just really simple, they’re pretty comfortable and it’s for a good cause too,” Shaw said.