USA (MNN) -- In the inner city across the United States, a good pair of shoes can be the first step toward helping needy children out of poverty's cycle.
Here's Life Inner City's National Director Ted Gandy says that's why they launched the "Heart and Sole" campaign. The lack of decent shoes "really chips away at the self-image of these needy children." In many cases, they are so humiliated that he or she doesn't even want to go to school to be snickered at by other children.
HLIC's "Heart and Sole" premise is simple: "Give inner-city children good shoes, and they're more likely to stay in school -- with a fighting chance to break out of the cycle of poverty they were born into."
It's a partnership effort to mount this kind of change in the heart of poverty. Gandy says, "Every year we've sought to raise funds so that we can provide shoes to ministries that are working in the inner city 24/7 so that they could, in turn, provide those shoes to families that are struggling."
HLIC wants to raise enough to give a pair of "in-the-box-smelling-new" shoes to 1,750 children across the nation. It costs $26.60 to give a pair of back-to-school shoes to a child of the inner city, just in time for the school year.
It also means touching communities with the hope of Christ. In the hands of their dedicated ministry partners, new shoes become powerful evangelism tools. First, you touch the kids. "They actually get shoes that are their size!" Then, Gandy adds, you touch the family. "It communicates to them that this ministry really cares about them. When that is communicated, it just opens the door to both meeting other physical needs and meeting the emotional needs, but also being able to minister to those children spiritually."
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