UKirk to create shoes for ‘Sole Hope’

Members of Marshall University’s UKirk will meet with other campus ministry groups and various members of the community to create shoes for Sole Hope, an organization focused on providing shoes to children in need, creating medical clinics and providing education and jobs in Uganda, Tuesday at 8 p.m. in the Campus Christian Center.

Claire Butler, UKirk campus minister, said this is the second consecutive year the group has hosted a Sole Hope event and anyone in the Marshall community is invited to attend.

“Participants will be cutting the used jeans into shoe uppers which will be shipped to Africa, where the uppers are sewn and attached to soles made from locally recycled tires by local African tailors and shoemakers,” Butler said. “The completed shoes are then distributed to clients at medical clinics in Uganda.”

Gently used jeans were provided for the event through donations both on and off campus, such as from the Presbyterian Church of the Covenant in Hurricane, UKirk campus minister Rob Laukoter’s church. All other supplies were provided by UKirk.

“It gives the students a way to live out their faith and to live out Micah 6:8 in action: ‘He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?’” Butler said.