Plains Woman's Club donates hundreds of shoes

Whoever said members of the Plains Woman's Club don't have soul didn't see them working on hundreds of soles last week at the United Methodist Church.

It was all part of the club's involvement with Soles4Souls, an international program to provide shoes for the less fortunate. Nearly two dozen club members gathered after their regular meeting at the church Thursday afternoon to box 216 pairs of shoes destined for the Soles4Souls warehouse in Wadley, Alabama.

"We just learned about this program earlier this year, so we thought we'd take it on because it sounded like a worthy cause," said club member Heather Allen. The General Federation of Women's Clubs adopted the project last year. The Plains club started collecting the shoes in May, said Debbie Heckman, also a club member.

Club President Debbi Kirschbaum said the nonprofit organization distributes shoes to needy people in the United States and to mostly poor countries around the world. Soles4Souls personnel look through the types of shoes collected and sends certain types to disaster relief sites.

The Plains Woman's Club collected a variety of shoe types - boots, sneakers, sandals, and work boots, said club member Michele Furry. Most were for adults, but there were some children's shoes collected and most were new or "gently used," said Heckman. Donors dropped most of the shoes off at the old one-room schoolhouse on Railroad Street, which is operated by the club. Member Shirley Nettleton retrieved several pairs from yard sales this summer.

It took the ladies about 30 minutes last week to sort the shoes and place rubber bands around each pair to keep them together. They filled 16 boxes.

The Sole4Souls program was one of "Seven Grand Initiatives" of the General Federation of Women's Clubs adopted by the Plains club earlier this year, said Kirschbaum. Other initiatives adopted included collecting books for schools, shelters and hospitals, planting trees, a project devoted to military women, a project to be performed on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, involvement in the Legislative Action Center, and the Million Dollar Club. Kirschbaum said the club will vote on whether or not to do the Soles4Souls program again next year. Locally, the club will be making Christmas stockings for the Sanders County Coalition for Families and will be hosting a Pumpkin Painting Party at the United Methodist Church on Halloween night.