Despite being the world’s second largest and second-most populous continent, Africa remains the world's poorest and most underdeveloped.

Shoe care experts Kiwi UK took the Malaki project – which had seen the Kiwi global brand team deliver 100,000 pairs of shoes to Africa in 2006 – and turned it into a successful opportunity for children to do the right thing for themselves and others.

Entitled "Kiwi UK Shoe Aid for Africa", the initiative aims to collect children's shoes to help kids in Africa get back to school. Our team encouraged children to tell us a little bit about their shoes, about why they were giving them away and what it was that made them special. The result was dozens of endearing messages, to which the UK children can’t wait to get an answer.

A selection of junior schools and Scout groups across the country kindly donated over 20,000 pair of shoes to the cause last year, coinciding with both World Poverty Day and the traditional back-to-school season. The team also organized extremely successful shoe collection events at key retailers' headquarters. In exchange for their shoes, all participants were offered a free Kiwi shoe shine.

We struck up a partnership with non-profit organization Humana to sort out, ship and give away the shoes in Africa to those in greatest need.

Just over a month after the collection finished, the sorting process began at the Humana UK warehouse. In a display of team spirit and collaboration, the entire UK marketing team was at Humana’s warehouse to help sort out the shoes.

On 20th November 2008, Kiwi representatives wrapped up warm and got sorting. The shoes were divided up into 30 kg bags of children's and adults' shoes and checked to ensure they were in good enough condition to be sent to Africa.

The area identified by the African branch of Humana as being most in need was Mozambique. The shoes started their three-month journey to Mozambique just before Christmas and were shipped to Beira, the main port of Mozambique, when local children started their school year.

At present, when second-hand clothes and shoes are distributed in Africa, it is common for the recipient to be charged a small sum to cover transport and handling costs. In the case of the 'Shoe Aid for Africa' campaign, all costs are totally funded by Kiwi so that both the adult and children’s shoes can be handed out for free.

Some examples of letters written by children:

Hello,
My name is Andy and I am 9 years old.
The shoes I have donated are the ones that I dearly loved and I played football and all kinds of sports in them, so I hope you have a wonderful time with them.
I want to be a footballer when I grow up and if that doesn’t go well I can always get a job at the theatre selling tickets and popcorn.
I am happy to give you these shoes. I don’t know what I would do without my shoes.
I don’t know what you like but I certainly looooove animals. If you can, can you give me a new species of animals, especially cats? I adore them!
From Andy
PS. I hope you really like my shoes and rock on

Letter from a Mozambique child:
My name is Adam Fernando. I’m from Mozambique and I have short hair and brown eyes. I would like to say to you thank you for offering us the shoes. I used to walk bare feet, but due to your help, now I’m happy with the shoes.