Shoes for Those Who Don’t Have Them

In Lee and Collier counties, some schoolchildren have never owned a new pair of shoes, according to this article from the Fort Myers News-Press. And in some families, a child actually has to share one pair of shoes with a sibling.

“There are children coming to school with bare feet,” said Jeanne Nealon, founder of the nonprofit Laces of Love, which provides new shoes to local children in need. “We give sneakers, because those shoes double for Physical Education class, and the kids can’t take the class without sneakers.”

Nealon was a young teacher at Bonita Springs Middle School in 1981 when she discovered one of her students had to share his shoes with one of his siblings.

“The first pair of shoes I gave, to that young man, changed my life,” she said. “Here I was teaching parts of speech and that writing had to have a beginning, middle and conclusion, and I had no idea if my students even had anything in their stomachs or had shoes.”

Nealon began running Laces of Love from her car, but now she has given more than 50,000 pairs of shoes to youngsters in the area.

Five years ago, musician Tamra Nashman Richardt began organizing fundraising concerts to help the organization with its mission. This year the “From Jazz to Broadway” concert will feature former “Saturday Night Live” band saxophonist Lew Del Gatto, the award-winning a cappella group BLING! and a number of local musicians, including performers from the Naples Philharmonic and the FGCU Bower School of Music, the News-Press article says.

Nealon said everyone at Laces of Love is a volunteer, and because the organization supports local retailers with bulk shoe purchases, those retailers support Laces of Love by alerting her to special deals like stock clearances—so the donated money stretches even further.

“We don’t even claim our gas when we deliver the shoes,” she said. “If you go to the concert, your $25 all goes to shoes.”