Teen Tackles 10-School Shoe Drive

By Lauren Hollon Sturdy
Buckner International

TYLER, Texas—Despite his age, Zack Lawson sounds as professional and polished as if he’s been in the “real world” for years. He’s been dealing with school administrations, tax forms and presentations a lot lately, which could have something to do with the 17-year-old’s mature demeanor.

Lawson recently wrapped up a 10-school shoe drive, a project that took eight months from inception to completion.  The drive fulfilled one of his requirements for the International Baccalaureate Programme, a college preparatory program for high school students that stresses global understanding and community service. Shoes for Orphan Souls appealed to Lawson as the focus for his service project because it benefits children and has a global reach.

When he looked into ways others had conducted shoe drives, he realized a citywide drive or one involving local radio stations was probably out of reach. But his dad worked in a local elementary school and Lawson knew they were working on rallying around service through Rachel’s Challenge, focusing on teaching the kids kindness and compassion through service.

He thought Shoes for Orphan Souls would go over well in schools because the focus is children, and it meshed perfectly with the themes of kindness, compassion and generosity that schools were already emphasizing.

“It would give the schools a tangible rallying point for this idea of Rachel’s Challenge,” he said.

He presented the project to the elementary school counselors at one of their monthly meetings. They all loved it.

Cutting through the red tape and paperwork to get the project approved by the district wasn’t so easy, but Lawson persevered, getting the required signatures, making phone calls and recruiting the help of his International Baccalaureate supervisor.

In the end, the shoe drive was approved and 10 elementary schools out of 17 in the district participated. They collected 500 pairs of shoes, 1,026 pairs of socks and 218 pairs of shoelaces. He got some monetary donations, too.

“I had no idea how to file the monetary donations, buy shoes and do tax returns,” he said. “My mom helped me do all that, and she helped me maximize the money to purchase more shoes.”

On January 14, they loaded down a pickup truck with 31 boxes filled with shoes, socks and laces, and Lawson and his parents drove it from Tyler to the Shoes for Orphan Souls warehouse in Dallas.

“It was nice to bring closure to something I initially doubted would ever get off the ground,” he said. “January 14th was a date I’d been looking forward to ever since I packed the last shoe and counted the last sock. I’ll miss all the wonderful teachers and students I’d met in the course of promoting the drive and collecting the donations. Without them, these past 8 months wouldn’t have been the success that it was.”

After he graduates this spring, Lawson hopes to attend college at the University of Texas at Austin, where he plans to study biomedical engineering.