Pam Nicholson-Flora
Second-grader Justice Flora, 7, of Lanham helps load boxes Aug. 17 filled with 1,120 pairs of donated shoes onto a truck to deliver to the Shoes 2 Share warehouse in Wilmington, Del. The nonprofit organization will ship the shoes to Haiti to help victims of January's earthquake

Lanham boy collects more than a thousand pairs to benefit Haiti earthquake victims – by Liz Skalski | Staff Writer (gazette.net)

When students are asked on the first day of school what they did this summer, 7-year-old Justice Flora’s story won’t be quite like any others.

Justice, of Lanham, has spent the last six weeks collecting 1,120 new and used pairs of shoes, most of which will be sent to Haiti to help victims of January’s earthquake that rocked Port-au-Prince.

He more than doubled his initial goal of 500 pairs of shoes, and after Justice and his family spent hours sorting the shoes, on Aug. 17 they filled two pickup trucks with about 50 boxes and 10 bags of shoes and delivered them to the Shoes2Share warehouse in Wilmington, Del.

“A little can change a lot,” said Justice, a second-grader at Riverdale Baptist School in Upper Marlboro. “I saw the earthquake on the news. I thought they would need shoes to help themselves. Haiti doesn’t have shoes like we do.”

After reading an article early this summer in Clubhouse Jr. magazine that challenged its young readers to collect and donate shoes to Shoes2Share, a nonprofit organization that works to provide shoes to children and their families, Justice solicited the help of more than 100 family members and friends to collect and donate shoes.

“The fun thing about it is when I go see the shoes and unload them and see them on the scale,” said Justice, who said the shoes he collected weighed a total of 1,750 pounds.

The shoes will be sent to non-governmental organizations in Haiti and other countries, said Shoes2Share’s co-founder, Rhonda Wampler, 43, of Chesapeake City.

Donors were also asked to give $10 to help offset shipping costs, Wampler said.

Shoes2Share’s goal was to collect 2,000 shoes by Aug. 30, and so far the organization has collected more than 8,000 pairs, Wampler said.

“We never had any idea that something as simple as shoes could make a profound difference in a person’s life,” Wampler said. “We had no idea that we’d see the motivation coming so much from just the children. That’s been exciting.”

A shipping date has not been set, said Wampler, who will take some shoes to Haiti during an October Shoes2Share mission trip. The remaining shoes will be shipped at a later date.

Justice’s mother, Pam Nicholson-Flora, 48, said the experience was rewarding. “People want to help, you just have to give them the opportunity,” Nicholson-Flora said. “It was an eye-opening experience that people would be so willing to donate.”

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