The Shoe Project - Launching Women Who Win's Capstone Philanthropic Initiative, An Interview with the Team
“This project has been a personal dream for many years. Growing up in India I saw many workers walking barefoot at work” For today’s story, we have an exciting twist. With the launch of our new charitable initiative, The Shoe Project, in which we provide shoes to communities in need such as slums, villages, and other underserved areas, we have an interview by co-founder Shaleen Sheth with co-founders Dr. Manju Sheth and Dr. Deepa Jhaveri, where they share the team’s inspiration and their vision for the initiative. Check out our story below, and a wonderful video of our pilot program, where we collaborated with the Lion’s Club of Juhu and Indian Medical Association of New England. Interested in getting involved, email us!
Check out a video from our pilot program
1. Women Who Win has done amazing work in creating a community, and sharing stories of women dreamers around the globe. The platform has now launched their own dream initiative, The Shoe Project. What was the motivation for this, and what was the need you saw?
Manju - Growing up in India,I had always seen the necessity and yet lack of availability of good footwear in the underserved communities . It was heartbreaking to seeing Rickshawwallahs and street vendors work bare feet in hot weather and monsoons so it just seemed the right thing to do as we planned a charity project.We excitedly conceptualized it and are thrilled to see it in fruition.
Deepa - This project has been a personal dream for many years. Growing up in India I saw many workers walking barefoot at work, on the streets, in the midst of heavy downpours of the monsoons or in the sweltering heat. Being a foot and ankle specialist, this bothered me at many different levels. These people relied on their feet for their livelihood yet the implications of being barefoot were tremendous including infections, ulcers, amputations, arthritis, skin and limb and life threatening diseases and so much more. Correct footwear is a basic and non-negotiable necessity which is often taken for granted. After discussions with co-founders Shaleen and Manju, who also felt extremely passionately about this project, we decided that Women Who Win was the perfect platform to launch this initiative and this dream came to fruition.
2. This project is a unique concept. What is the mission behind the project, and how did you bring it to fruition?
Deepa - Our mission is to provide quality footwear and thereby empower the lives of men, women and children of all ages to continue living their best and daily lives. As our proverbial “village” came together, every one of the co-founders brought their unique skill set to the table. I used my education and expertise from a podiatric perspective and this helped us give guidelines for the quality and standard of footwear we wanted to distribute.
Our co-founder Shaleen brought her unique background from the technical aspect and is helping in getting the project on our website, promoting and putting together the marketing materials, donation platform, and media assets. She brought her valuable perspective as a non healthcare person and helped bring this initiative to a global audience.
Over numerous meetings (and coffees), we formulated the model for this initiative, from collecting monetary donations to purchase quality shoes to finding and contacting local organizations in India who would do the field work and identify the areas of need as well as do the in person donations. Our pilot run has been tremendously successful.
3. You recently launched the pilot program, where the team donated over 700 pairs of shoes in collaboration with some wonderful organizations. How exciting! Tell us about the pilot. What was the most rewarding part of this?
Manju - The pilot program made our dream a reality, as the Women Who Win team. I am a Physician with tremendous interest in Diabetes Mellitus, so have seen up close the devastation caused by various diseases on feet including ulcers ,gangrene, osteomyelitis and even amputations. Great footcare goes a long way in prevention of complications of multiple medical conditions. Deepa is a podiatrist so this shoe project for the needy seemed perfect for us .
As always, good intentions bring like minded people together; we got tremendous support from Lion’s club of Juhu in Mumbai in helping our concept become a reality. They were able to use their experience in finding the most needy folks and in the sourcing & distribution of quality footwear. This will be an ongoing project with them, and wonderful organizations across India. I am also the past president of Indian Medical Association of New England, and Deepa is in the current leadership team, so we were very blessed to be able to tap into the expertise of the organization. Dr Dhurmil Shah, current president of IMANE is also very aligned with mission and support of charitable project with IMANE so it became a great collaboration. We are very grateful for that. The most rewarding part for sure was to see the joy on the faces of people when they were gifted the shoes, and that of the Lion Ladies of the club who loved being a part of this project so much .
4. What’s next? What is the team’s next big dream for the project?
Village Residents farming in monsoon season, now with shoes provided by The Shoe Project- Women Who Win
Deepa - With our initial pilot launch donation of 700 pairs of shoes through the Lions Club, we plan to continue working with them as well as other organizations like Rotary Club etc to donate and educate across different states in India. One other aspect of our mission for this initiative is foot education on a global scale. We plan to roll this out at different levels. In collaboration with the Indian Medical Association of New England (IMANE) and president Dr. Dhrumil Shah, each shoe donation will include basic foot health guidelines translated into local languages to promote better foot care and increase longevity for every person receiving shoes. Our hope for this to translate into increased awareness among their family and friends thereby creating a cascade effect and affecting the population at large. Additionally we are working with many podiatry organizations in the United States and other countries to help bring advanced foot education to our global audience in the form or articles, lectures, videos and podcasts. Podiatrists we have talked to are not only passionate about the profession, but also very passionate about raising awareness about podiatry, foot exams, red flags, diabetes and more. We are working with them to answer questions and educate our audience on all things feet!
Manju - This is an ongoing project that has been started in India in collaboration with the best organizations that are committed to charitable work. We have an upcoming project with Rotary Club as well. We are also working with many other charities to provide good footwear to Rickshah wallahs and slum dwellers as well.We are also working with Doctors in India so we can get information & provide special diabetic shoes .We are also working with leprosy clinics in some parts of India to provide shoes.We have been approached for shoes for some old people homes so it is going to be a continuous work in progress for us.We are hoping to expand this project in other parts of the world as well as we are a global platform.
Shaleen - My next big dream with this project is to collaborate with women shoe-makers and manufacturers to donate the shoes, bringing support to their businesses and aiding our mission in women empowerment at the global level. I truly enjoyed managing the technical and operations side of the project, and bringing it to the website, putting the pilot video and marketing together, and in the creativity of growing this beautiful initiative.
For more information on The Shoe Project, click here
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