The com­pany TOMS not only sells com­fort­able shoes, they also give them away. Last week, TOMS gave away thou­sands of pairs to chil­dren in New Orleans.

From this story that we found in the New Orleans Times Picayune, writer Susan Lan­gen­hen­nig tells us more about the unique company.

Two years ago, Blake Mycoskie came to New Orleans to sell some shoes. He came back last week to give some away.

You might not know his name, but you’ve prob­a­bly seen his face. Mycoskie is the founder of TOMS, Shoes for Tomor­row, a com­pany with an unusual busi­ness model: For every pair of shoes it sells, it gives away a pair to a child (or in some cases, adult) in need.

Mycoskie is the first to admit his mis­sion is as com­pelling as his shoes — a com­fort­able can­vas slip-on mod­eled after the tra­di­tional Argen­tine alpar­gatas. His story is a good one: young, ide­al­is­tic guy out to prove phil­an­thropy can be fash­ion­able and prof­itable. His busi­ness card lists his title as “chief shoe giver.”
…

On Thurs­day, he arrived at Langston Hughes Ele­men­tary School in Gen­tilly with an entourage of 20 vol­un­teers from around the coun­try and one from Canada. A total of 33 vol­un­teers paid their own travel expenses just to be part of the New Orleans TOMS “shoe drop.”

In three days, the com­pany gave away 2,000 pairs of shoes to stu­dents at Langston Hughes, Lafayette Acad­emy, ARISE Ele­men­tary, Akili Acad­emy and Mar­tin Behrman Ele­men­tary schools. TOMS staff con­tacted local social work­ers and the KidS­mart orga­ni­za­tion to iden­tify schools with seri­ous needs. ABC’s “Good Morn­ing Amer­ica” was here to cap­ture it all on cam­era.
…

Though he enjoyed jok­ing around with the local kids on Thurs­day, Mycoskie remains com­mit­ted to fight­ing poverty abroad, par­tic­u­larly in Ethiopia, where one of the company’s fac­to­ries is located.

“There’s an ill­ness there that peo­ple get that cre­ates leg and foot swelling, and it’s really awful and com­pletely pre­ventable,” he said. “A doc­tor we’re work­ing with thinks we can erad­i­cate this dis­ease in 20 years.”

The ill­ness affects 15 per­cent of the pop­u­la­tion of south­ern Ethiopia. “I don’t know who I’m going to marry or if I’ll ever have kids,” Mycoskie said. “But I do know that every year for the next 20 years, I’m going to Ethiopia.”

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