Santa Monica Mom Collects Soles for Peru

Elizabeth Salem can't forget the barefoot children she saw in the fall during a medical mission trip to Arequipa, Peru.

One child, she said, walked with a flip flop on one foot and half of a shoe on the other. His big toe was black, dead and about to fall off. 

"I had heard different things about Peru, but when we went to visit these villages it was eye opening to see kids walking around with no shoes," she said.

Now at home in Santa Monica, she's collected about 800 pairs of shoes of all different types that will be shipped back to Peru next fall.

In organizing the shoe drive at the start of November, primarily at local schools, the only requirement she set was that the shoes have soles. She will take anything, she told her friends and peers: Sneakers, sandals, dress up shoes, sports shoes and the like. They can be dirty, grimy, no laces, stained or torn, she said.

"There’s been overwhelming response to this project. I think everybody wants to give and this is such a great, easy way of giving," Salem said.

Many of the donations have come from Santa Monica school children, who after listening to Salem's presentations in their classrooms, have returned to their bedrooms to sift through their closets.

She said it has struck her "how much these kids have been affected by the project, and how much they're learning about giving back."

She will make a return trip to Peru next fall to personally deliver what's bound to be thousands of shoes.

In Arequipa the first time, her husband Morris, a pediatric cardiologist who practices locally at Kaiser Permanente, was closing holes in children’s' hearts and opening and closing blood vessels with the Hearts With Hope Foundation. The foundation provides medical care to Latin American children suffering from  congenital heart disease.

While her husband performed surgeries, Elizabeth Salem tended to kids in small villages, schools and special needs homes.

She has three children of her own, and she imagined them shuffling around a playground barefoot. 

"How can you run, how can you climb, how can you jump rope without shoes?" she questioned. "They’re so limited without shoes."

To donate shoes, contact Salem at cmymankaplan@gmail.com.