Donate
A community lined up receiving footwear in warm low sun, a tree and open sky behind them, natural unguarded expressions.IMPACT ▪ 2022
FOOTWEAR DRIVE · MAY 2022

Shoes are a small thing until you're the one without them.

We ran it under Raahat and Muskaan together. Footwear covers both kinds of need: winter cold, and the everyday cost of getting a child to school.

Drive
Project Raahat and Project Muskaan
Where
Across Delhi-NCR settlements
When
May 2022
What we brought
Footwear
The stakes, in numbers

Across India an average of about 810 people a year died of cold exposure over 2013–2022. Bare or broken footwear compounds that risk for anyone already sleeping rough, and for a child, the wrong shoes are one more reason a family keeps them home.

Source · NCRB · Accidental Deaths in India

Low afternoon sun, a line along a settlement's edge, and then the same again at the next one. People tried pairs on where they stood, the only fitting room there was.

Footwear is unglamorous and it is missed more than almost anything. About 20% of what a family spends on a 'free' education goes to books, stationery and uniforms; shoes ride in that same column of small costs (NSS 2017–18).

What the drive covered
  • Footwear, child and adult sizes
  • Fitted on the day, not handed in a box
The morning, in frames
Teen volunteer distributing footwear to village women, golden light, real exchangeIMPACT ▪ 2022
A teen volunteer hands footwear to village women in the golden light, an unposed moment caught mid-exchange.
Row of women holding their new footwear, colourful dupattas, warm morning light — faces and colourIMPACT ▪ 2022
A row of women with their new footwear, colour and faces in the morning sun.
Quiet one-on-one handover, girl in red — calmer portrait counterpointIMPACT ▪ 2022
A quiet one-on-one handover, a girl in red.
A boy hands blue sandals to a woman in a family group, the Raahat banner visible behind.IMPACT ▪ 2022
A boy passes a pair of blue sandals across to a woman, the drive banner behind them.
Why we ran it

We frame this as dignity: a child in shoes that fit shows up to school; a worker with warm, dry feet keeps working through the cold. That is the whole case for a pair of shoes.

We run footwear alongside the blanket and school-kit drives because it's the same households every time: cold, stretched, one small expense from a bad week. Better to bring it all in one morning.

See Project Raahat Read the next report

Get the next pair
of shoes out.

Donate
Where to next

Keep reading, or pitch in.

GIVEDonate₹300 to ₹2,500 turns into rations, school kits and winter warmth on the next drive.Donate now