10,000 Shoes Escape Landfills

Baton Rouge, LA, February 15, 2010 --(PR.com)-- Christian Life Academy (CLA) celebrates the collection of over 10,000 shoes within one year. These shoes will be distributed to three different organizations for recycling purposes. Nike Reuse-A-Shoe Program will receive the bulk of the shoes and will turn them into Nike Grind, a material used in sports and playground surfaces. Soles4Soles, Inc. will be the recipient of an estimated 1,000 pairs of shoes to benefit their relief efforts in Haiti. Locally, St. Vincent de Paul will be the recipient of the remaining shoes.

“These shoes will go toward our sustainable strategy to distribute more than 1.3 million pairs of shoes to the Haitian folks by the end or 2010,” said Wayne Elsey, Founder and CEO of Soles4Souls. “It is organizations like Christian Life Academy that add to our mission of giving shoes to the hurting,” he added.

The shoe collection was inspired by a dream of Mr. Larry Galloway and his son, Langston in April of 2008. Langston has attended CLA for five years and will be graduating this spring with a full athletic scholarship to St. Joseph’s in Philadelphia. Mr. Galloway envisioned this collection as a way to build a track for the CLA campus, at the same time recycling shoes instead of throwing them away. As for the track, CLA will continue to seek $50,000 of funding required to apply for a $50,000 matching grant opportunity through the Bowerman Track Program through Nike.

Thanks to businesses like Varsity Sports and Woman’s Wellness & Fitness who were committed from inception of this dream, other businesses joined forces and help grow their collection shoe by shoe. Pratt Industries, located in New Orleans has partnered with CLA by donating Gaylord boxes for packaging the shoes. CLA students held competitions for the most shoes collected and have learned some of the benefits of recycling and keeping shoes out of landfills.

Students, community volunteers and businesses involved with this year long collection celebrated these efforts on Wednesday, February 10, 2010. Shoes will be shipped from the CLA campus on Monday, February 15, 2010.

For more information about the organizations mentioned you can visit: Nike’s Reuse-A-Shoe Program at www.nikereuseashoe.com and Soles4Souls, INC at www.giveshoes.org.

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