It's From The Sole is a New York based charitable organisation which specialises in offering shoes to the homeless population. It was interesting however that I only found the company through thorough online research. It seems that there needs to be am accessible platform in place for homeless people to find out about aid such as this.
It’s 11 a.m. and McDonnell is armed with a 36” rolling duffel bag that’s filled with sneakers. His mission for the rest of the afternoon: find homeless people in the streets and inside the bus station to give them to.
“I don’t want to do soup kitchens,” he says. “I love sneakers. We want to take the sneaker culture and utilize it in a positive way.”
It’s been three years since McDonnell first took his suitcase full of sneakers into the streets and started his nonprofit: It’s From the Sole. He was a team of one at the onset, taking shoes that were donated by friends out to the destitute that were finding shelter in places like Port Authority, New York Penn Station, and Grand Central Terminal. The trio of transit hubs is affectionately referred to by him as the “Love Triangle.”
Nowadays, McDonnell has some backup. He makes these runs around the Love Triangle at least twice a week with his partner Ruby Lassi and two other volunteers. The quartet gives out around 20-30 shoes during each go-around.
“This is the city with the biggest sneaker culture in the world. We have an abundance of sneakers here. There’s 60,000 homeless people in New York City. What we want to do is use sneakers to help”
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