By MATT PIKE
St. Joseph Post
The annual shoe distribution hosted by AFL-CIO Community Services will help provide students in need with new shoes for the upcoming school year.
The Soles 4 Christ shoe distribution serves students preschool through 12th grade from Andrew, Buchanan, Clinton, and Dekalb counties in Missouri as well as Doniphan County in Kansas
Executive Director Nichi Seckinger says during the event families will come in with their children to pick out their shoes.
"They'll go through a sizing, we size the children and make sure the shoes fit well, have them take a couple steps around and make sure everything is fitting the way it needs to, because of course we want these shoes to last them the entire school year," Seckinger tells KFEQ/St. Joseph Post. "And once everyone has a pair of shoes they're sent out into the wild for the rest of the summer for a few more days until school starts."
The agency spent the last month collecting shoes for the event. Distribution begins today.
i Seckinger believes the agency is in pretty decent shape heading into the distribution.
"We've had right at 1,00 pair of shoes come in, and last year we had right at 1,000 kids, we are anticipating that it could be more this year the numbers have increased every year since COVID," Seckinger explains. "So we think that we'll probably get closer to our 1,200 which was our average before, I think we're going to hit about there."
There is still some time to donate new tennis shoes for the distribution which can be dropped off at the AFL-CIO Community Services offices.
Distribution begins this morning at 9 o’clock at the Scottish Rites Temple in St. Joseph. Distribution continues tomorrow; the hours are from 9am to 7pm both days.