Since Kate Ferguson and several of her colleagues launched Shoes for Students in 1998, they’ve received scores of thank you letters from local children, educators, and parents who have witnessed the program’s impacts firsthand.
Ferguson saves her favorites in a personal notebook.
“You and I can’t even imagine what is going on in some of these households,” Ferguson said. “We’d like to think we’re aware, but we’re really not.”
In one letter from 2009, a principal thanked the organization’s board members for providing a kindergartener at George Washington Battles Elementary School with money for new clothes and shoes during the first week of school, while she and her parents were being evicted from their home.
She had been wearing old hand-me-downs, the principal wrote, and was so embarrassed that she didn’t want to attend school.
In another, an administrator at Miller Elementary School thanked the board for helping a family with 12 children buy new shoes for each and every one. The kids were living in two small apartments, and the two eldest siblings were essentially tasked with raising the others.
“We are talking about kids who have never been to a shoe store,” the administrator wrote. “To have someone bring out boxes of brand new shoes to choose from has been overwhelming for many of the kids I have taken to the shoe store.”
It was an article about a similar program in Chicago that originally made Ferguson want to start Shoes for Students, a nonprofit that provides families throughout the Santa Maria Valley with gift cards for children’s shoes and clothes. But it’s stories like these that have kept the nonprofit running solely on donations and fundraisers for 20 years.
The organization’s biggest annual fundraiser, a four player scramble golf tournament, is coming up this year on Sept. 9 at the Santa Maria Country Club, and will help it donate thousands of $30 Walmart and Payless ShoeSource gift cards to kids of all ages in Santa Maria, Guadalupe, Orcutt, New Cuyama, and Sisquoc.
Last school year, Ferguson said Shoes for Students gave out about 1,200 cards worth $36,000 all together, and they’re expecting even more requests this year.
Poverty is a real issue for many students in Santa Barbara County, according to Maggie White, public information officer for the Santa Maria-Bonita School District and board president of Shoes for Students.
More than 80 percent of Santa Maria-Bonita students qualify for free and reduced meals, and White said about 6,000 of the district’s 17,100 kids are considered to be homeless by the federal government. The federal definition of homelessness, she said, includes families living in hotels and camps, and two of every three families living together in a single-family dwelling.
Based on those same guidelines, about 870 of the Santa Maria Joint Union High School District’s 8,000 students are considered homeless, according to a district spokesman, and more than 5,000 qualify for free and reduced meals.
Many of those families, White said, don’t have much extra money for clothes, school supplies, or shoes.
“We hear stories about students who only have one set of clothing,” White said, adding that those clothes get quickly worn, dirty, and smelly. “And then that’s what the student is focusing on when they should be focusing on school.”
Most requests for cards come from homeless liaisons, family outreach advocates, school nurses, and teachers, White said, right at the beginning of the year and throughout winter. Just before school started this month, Shoes for Students gave 44 gift cards to students staying at the Good Samaritan homeless shelter, she said.
Alexis Nshamamba, program manager of Good Sam’s after school program, said the gift cards helped homeless families prepare for the upcoming school year. Many homeless kids, Nshamamba said, walk everywhere, live in crowded spaces, and can’t afford to do laundry every week.
“I think first and foremost the ability to be comfortable and not in pain is really important,” Nshamamba said. “And it’s important to not have to focus on fitting in or feeling uncomfortable in your clothes.”
Staff Writer Kasey Bubnash writes School Scene each week. Information can be sent to the Sun via mail, fax, or email at mail@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Aug 30 – Sep 6, 2018.