Our Mission & Objectives
Mission
At Least A Pair Of Shoes For Every Child!
True to our name "Souls4soles", our main goal is to ensure that by the turn of the decade no African child would have to walk to school or anywhere for that matter barefoot. We are starting from a little corner in Lagos, Nigeria but won’t stop until we reach the innermost part of the remotest communities in Africa.
Child Health
One of our main objectives is to improve the health and welfare of children and young people in our communities. To ensure this, health screenings are carried out during our shoe distribution outreach events at schools and other projects and referrals to hospitals are made when deemed necessary by our healthcare volunteers.
UK: Food Banks And Food Aid
It is our aim to expand our Feed The Homeless Initiative and Food Aid program among black ethnic minorities within the London boroughs of Newham, Southwark, Greenwich and Lewisham.
Riding on the success of our "Feed The Homeless" program carried out several times pre-Covid within the broadway mall at Straford in Newham, London we have decided to extend similar gestures to some of the most socially deprived part of London where we organize pop-up food stalls in front of a church where members of the public can stop by and pick up groceries.
Nigeria: Feeding Programs
It is our mission to expand our feeding programs and pop-up foodstuff spots to as many areas and communities as possible. In Abeokuta, Ogun State Nigeria in the peak of Covid-19, we visited the beggars colony at lafewa in Abeokuta where we fed its 100+ inmates and provided relief materials as well. We hope to carry out this feeding initiative both in the UK and in Nigeria.
Mobile Blood Pressure Checks
Through our outreach programmes and with the help of volunteer/paid health professionals we visit market places, schools and youth centres to conduct health checks. Traders are educated on the need to check and monitor their blood pressure: And thereafter shown how to take their blood pressure readings. Blood pressure checks are then carried out and traders found to have abnormal readings are referred to their doctors for prescriptions to manage their condition.
UK: To Advocate For Fair Treatment Of Young African Immigrants
Having witnessed firsthand the many adverse effect and constraint of being undocumented on young immigrants and their families, we seek to assist these young people by offering support through signposting them to volunteer legal advisors for free legal advice to kickstart the process to get them documented.
To Alleviate Poverty In Line With UN's SDG Goals
It is our mission to play our part in ending poverty as prescribed by the United Nations. We believe strongly that if you empower a woman financially the battle against family poverty is already half won, to this end all our donation materials e.g School bags, shoes, sandals, toys e.t.c are locally sourced from market women with the hope that the profit made from our purchase no matter how small will go towards improving the lot of the family in one way or the other.
Advocacy For The Girl Child By Addressing Gender Favoritism
Another objective is to sensitize young people to the fact that a girl child has as much potential and perhaps even more than the male counterpart. To this end we organize youth programs and workshops to educate young people on the need to view a female child as an equal. We believe that if we address these issues at a young age, in the long term gender inequality and misrepresentation of women would be at a minimal or perhaps even non existent.
It is our aim to address the unspoken culture of favoring a male child above the female child in some communities. For instance, we have seen families with limited resources to educate all their children, where circumstances had forced them to chose which child to educate: Sadly many had opted to educate the male child even where the female is more academically promising. The choice of the male child is simply borne out of the belief that a male child is a potential heir who would bear the family name for as long as he lives, and the female however would one day be married off and change her name. It is beliefs and practices as these ones that spiral into gender imbalances and gender inequalities.
Our strategic priorities up to 2022 are:
- Providing shoes for every child
- Improve the lot and welfare of children, youngsters and the family as a whole