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Nonprofit Group Also Raising Funds to Build Children's Hospital in Kenya

By Kathryn McConnell  

In 1995, elite runner Toby Tanser was living and training in Kenya. While he was using up-to-date training equipment provided by a sportswear company sponsor, he noticed that throughout Kenya, many runners were training and racing without shoes. He began to give away his own used athletic shoes to runners who needed them.

When some of those runners began to win major races in Kenya and other countries, Tanser realized that something as simple as a pair of shoes could change a person's life.

Giving away his own shoes led Tanser to establish Shoe4Africa, a New York-based nonprofit organization that collects usable shoes, ships them to Africa using donated funds, and distributes them to people who need them through partner athletes and coaches in Africa. At the 2008 New York Marathon, runners and spectators donated 10,000 pairs of slightly used shoes to Shoe4Africa, Tanser told America.gov.

The group also sponsors free races across Africa. When Tanser saw that these races were bringing together families and neighbors to cheer runners and to sing and dance, he and some of his colleagues decided to use the large gatherings to raise awareness of HIV/AIDS, basic hygiene and other health issues. They prepared health materials printed in local languages and distributed them at races, and recruited health workers to provide on-site HIV testing.

So far, Shoe4Africa has worked in Kenya, Tanzania and Morocco. It has plans to begin operating in other countries, Tanser said. The group sponsors several running teams, a football (soccer) team and a running training camp and provides scholarships for women runners.

Currently, Tanser is in Kenya, where running is a celebrated sport, putting the final touches on plans for Shoe4Africa's latest race, a free five-kilometer "peace run" in Kibera, a large slum community with an estimated population of more than 1.2 million. More than 5,000 people are expected to run in the December 13 race.

Joining Tanser for the race and a following celebrity football match will be American Golden Globe-winning actor Anthony Edwards, who starred for several years on the popular American television drama series ER.

Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga and New York City Marathon organizer George Hirsch are also expected to take part in the day's events.

Support from Edwards and other celebrity volunteers is important because of the worldwide attention the personalities draw, Tanser said. Edwards, whose ER character, a hospital emergency room doctor, has been known to tens of millions of viewers in many countries for several years, has appeared on national American television interview programs telling viewers about the need for donations of shoes and funds for shipping costs and about the link between footwear and disease prevention.

Now Shoe4Africa is on a venture - to raise $15 million to build a 250-bed children's hospital in Eldoret, Kenya, where a major health issue is hookworm, a parasite that enters the body through bare feet and can lead to mental disabilities and malfunctioning immune systems.

More information about Shoe4Africa ( http://shoe4africa.org/ ) is available on the organization's Web site.

Source: U.S. Department of State