Shoe4Africa is not a big organization, far from it. The shoe collection vehicle is a blue bicycle and a black garbage sack. When we collected for the Kibera project we upgraded; a borrowed truck on the side of the road. Olympic medalists, world championship winners, unknown African athletes all have carried sacks back of shoes back home so we can save on postage. Memories of Catherine "The Great" Ndereba pulling a sack of shoes through one hotel lobby stay with me.

To date (Dec 2007) we have never received one single grant. The storage facility since November has been great - up in the Bronx at West Farms, but for the first 11-years and 11-months of Shoe4Africa it was the living room. Carting the boxes to the post office? That was done by using a luggage trolley. The funds? Self funded spare a few residents of New York - things started to change in 2006 when Shoe4Africa became a non-for-profit. Now we have enough funds to cover postage by kind donations. Still, we can grow with more funds, or remain doing things like we are doing without more funds. One issue is our service of transporting shoes is not funded by our events (races) - they are complete, and meant to be, loss making ventures.

The first company to give funds was Leppin in December 2006. Leppin had been sponsoring me as an athlete since 1993; it seemed a great transition.

I wish we had more programs, more drop off points, could help more people. Please remember we have no staff, in fact not one person working full time on this venture, but we will continue to do our best, and hope that you will bear with us. Thank you to every single person who has helped make this project what it has become.