As an immigrant from Venezuela, I was exposed to the deplorable side of world poverty. After taking International Relations as a Dual Enrollment course in FIU and AP Human Geography in my sophomore year, my knowledge and understanding of underdevelopment and scarcity around the globe was refined. A combination of acquired information and experiences from my mind and ample courage and determination pushed me to strive to change what I believed to be wrong, and there wasn’t a better place to start than the world’s overcrowded shoe closets!

Wearing shoes would help them in the fight against environmentally caused diseases, cuts, scratches and parasites (such as hookworm larvae), as well as progressing in terms of world development.

Shoes4Africa, Inc (www.help4africa.com) is a non-profit organization that I founded last summer. Initially a county-wide, but recently international campaign, S4A accomplishes its goal through the recollection of shoes in diverse cities of the US and eight countries around the world to be shipped to the République de Côte d'Ivoire, Nigeria and other African nations, where many people walk barefoot and some have never owned a pair of shoes. Not only has Help4Africa ameliorated the conditions in which many not so fortunate live by providing them with shoes to walk with, but it has avoided the diffusion of the plausible unhealthy conditions and diseases that were brought along with being barefoot in places like Enugu State, Nigeria. We established a partnership with FedEx to ship shoes. Moreover, the project created young leaders in over 20 cities and seven countries that are now in charge of an important campaign in their schools and communities. It made the world ever more aware of the harsh conditions of others, inspired teens like myself to start their own campaigns and most importantly, changed my life!