The Shoes for Orphan Souls drive made “tremendous” progress July 13 as 75 ExxonMobil interns spent a day at the SOS opening day at Valley View Centre Mall, sorting and packing thousands of shoes for shipment to orphans in more than 30 countries around the world.
It is the 15th year that the ExxonMobil Community Summer Jobs program has been in the Dallas area, but the first year that interns played a role in choosing their summer service project. Previously, the Volunteer Center of Dallas County, who administers the program in the area, chose the organization where interns would complete a service project.
Charlotte Graves, 21, served as the project leader for the intern group and was a member of the service committee that chose Buckner as their project.
“Out of all the applications we saw,” said Graves, “Buckner was really the only organization that desperately needed the help. It was a really big project, and we wanted a place that was big enough for all 75 interns to get involved together.”
Thousands of shoes in three rooms provided plenty of space for the interns to create a giant assembly line, complete with unwrapping, tossing, packing and sorting shoes that will eventually grace the feet of thousands of children.
Intern Marissa Westerfield, 21, remembers working with Buckner a few years ago as she helped raise money for a service project at North Mesquite High School.
“It’s neat now to see where that money went and what we did,” she said. “You don’t think about the impact you can make. Not everyone can afford to go to Russia to hand out shoes, but we can afford to spend a Saturday here sorting shoes and do a lot of good.”
Andrew Knight, director of humanitarian aid for Buckner Orphan Care International, said that the impact these interns made was “tremendous.”
“We have thousands of shoes that are ready to be processed, but we can’t send them until they’ve gone through the steps of sorting by size and type. A group this large that we can divide up into three stations makes a huge difference.”
“Everyone is having a great time,” said Graves. “People are sitting down, talking and sorting the shoes, getting to throw them around—everyone’s having a great time.”
