About Us at DSW
The Life-Changing Impact of Your Donation: Read Merary’s Story
Big-hearted people don’t often get to see the life-changing impact of their generosity.
When you make a shoe donation, you trade your hard-earned dollars for the hope of making a difference. But it’s hard to know for sure if you’re doing much good in the world.
We can assure you that your gifts to Soles4Souls truly matter. Especially to people like Merary, a widowed single mom in Honduras.
When we first introduced her, she was cleaning houses for $5/day—not enough to consistently provide food and diapers for her two children who had severe disabilities.
Back then, Merary told us:
“I didn’t want the sun to rise. I didn’t want to worry about not having food for the day, or not being able to afford diapers. … It was hard because many times [my children] saw me cry; they saw me in despair, because I didn’t know what to do and I felt alone…”
But then Merary joined our 4Opportunity program, which helps people start and grow businesses selling shoes and clothing. And things began to change for her family.
For several years, Merary sold shoes from her home. She used all her scrappy entrepreneur energy, Facebook, and WhatsApp to expand her customer base.
“There’s hope now that little by little, things are going to get better, that tomorrow I’ll want to do something and I can do something.” – Merary
And then, just in the last few weeks, that “something” actually happened…
Merary opened her own store: Zapatos y Más (Shoes and More)!
Sadly, Merary recently lost her daughter. But her income from her new store is sustaining her son Jeffrey—in more ways than one. Not only does he now have the medication he needs, but he’s also found a new purpose: doing marketing for Zapatos y Más!
So, yes. When you give to Soles4Souls, you’re making a big difference:
“My life is different now. … Before I felt unsure. Now I feel secure.” – Merary
The thing is, Merary’s story is just one of hundreds I could share with you. Because we’re committed to long-term relationships with our 4Opportunity entrepreneurs, we get to see their incredible progress, year after year.
Their household income increases. Their kids get to go to good schools. Their health and nutrition improves. They’re more optimistic for the future.
Please understand, Soles4Souls isn’t responsible for those successes. You are, through your generosity.
When you make a donation to Soles4Souls, you will—quite literally—change someone’s life for the good.
And because 4Opportunity entrepreneurs like Merary are so wildly successful, they often offer employment to other people in their community. That means your life-changing gift gets multiplied over and over again.
Celebrating DSW’s Partnership with Soles4Souls
Hi, this Buddy Teaster. I'm the CEO at Soles4Souls and I want to thank the entire Designer Brands family for everything that's happened in 2023. We've hit some big milestones and it's a lot to celebrate. 1st is $2,000,000 in cash donated from your roundup of the register and your corporate donations. Unbelievable. We would never have imagined this happening when we first started our partnership seven years ago and we crossed the 9 million pairs of shoes donated mark. Unbelievable.
So, if we just look at those two things, that would be plenty to celebrate. But, also, I think it's calling out the travel program that we have together, so many of Designer Brands associates have had the chance to travel with us to Honduras and Guatemala and see that work personally that the connection between what happens in the stores and what happens on the ground, we're really proud of including the leadership team who took a trip in November. So, when we talk about partnership at Soles4Souls, Designer Brands is top of the list. This long term partnership means so much to so many. We want to thank you for everything that you've done and we are looking forward to even more great things happening in 2024.
DSW Associates Travel to Meet Donation Recipients
Soles4Souls is a non-profit organization we partner with to collect shoe donations in our DSW and Shoe Company stores and donate our samples and other excess inventory to. Donating used shoes gives the shoes another life and keeps them out of landfills. With your help, we have now donated nearly 8 million pairs of shoes to Soles4Souls! Those provide a year of food, shelter and education for 10,000+ families and keep 8,750,000 pounds of textiles out of landfills!
As part of our partnership with Soles4Souls, we have the opportunity to visit some of the locations that receive the shoe donations we collect in stores. Our goal of these trips is to bring the stories of individuals who receive our shoe donations closer - To meet them individually and see and feel the direct positive impact of the work we do with Soles4Souls.
Both groups were a mix of store associates and corporate associates from the US and Canada.