If you have seen students walking around Grounds barefoot this past week at an alarmingly high frequency, don’t panic. Since last Monday, 30 University students have gone sans shoes in order to raise awareness for the student group Nicaraguan Orphan Fund.
The idea of walking barefoot for a week was cultivated when the participants noticed on their spring break trip to Managua, Nicaragua the lack of shoes worn by children and adults in the communities they were serving. The week will conclude with the organization’s 5K race Saturday April 20, during which shoes are optional.
“I hope that it gets people curious” said fourth-year College student Logan Gates, the group’s president. “We want to bring the passion we felt for these kids to U.Va.”
For the first time in his 10 trips to Nicaragua, Gates said education was the focus of the group’s most recent trip. Since their return from the capital city in March they have been actively seeking to raise $25,000, which will be put towards teacher salaries, school supplies and scholarships to pay for transportation for high school students.
This shoeless week is just a “small gesture compared to the difficulties of [Nicaraguans’] lives, but one that has the potential to spread awareness of a problem and inspire motivation for change,” second-year College student Julia Colopy said. She hopes friends will stop her and ask why is she barefoot, and in doing so will be able to also empathize with the poverty struck Nicaraguan communities, she said.
Colopy said as much as she was excited for the week’s events, she was “also nervous because of the broken glass that is everywhere in the Rugby road area. I will definitely be carrying a little first aid kit with me.”
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