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Summer 2006

Service projects ship shoes, books abroad

Photo courtesy of Stephen Esquith

Modibo Kane of the Mali Ministry of Education (center) accepts a gift of scholarly books and journals from Stephen Esquith, chairperson of the Department of Philosophy, during a ceremony last February at the Centre de Langues at the University of Bamako in Mali. At left is Famakan Kiabou, director of the Centre.

Grassroots work to improve the world well beyond the borders of the East Lansing campus is a significant component of MSU’s international land-grant mission.

One example is the six-year-old Heart and Sole project. Based in MSU’s College of Osteopathic Medicine, the project collects and distributes new and gently used shoes to poor people around the world. More than 4,500 pairs of shoes have been shipped so far to a number of countries, including Malawi, Nicaragua, Haiti and Honduras.

“In many poor nations, where people often live surrounded by environmental hazards, decent footwear still is a luxury,” said Pat Grauer, who coordinates the project. “Much of the population in these countries, especially the children, simply does not have shoes. This hinders them from finding work or even going to school.”

Heart and Sole collects shoes and boots from the MSU community as well as from area high school students and other organizations. The shoes are sent via commercial shipping companies as funds allow. In addition, faculty, staff and students occasionally take boxes of shoes for distribution when they travel to developing countries or impoverished areas of the United States.

During the first six months of 2006, Heart and Sole sent nearly 700 pairs of shoes to Guatemala, Haiti, Kenya and Nigeria.

Another example of such grassroots service comes from an evolving relationship between the College of Arts and Letters and the University of Bamako in Mali.

The connection dates back to 2004, when MSU philosophy department chairperson Stephen Esquith was in the West African country leading a newly-created study abroad program on ethics and development. The University of Bamako offered classroom space for Equith’s program free-of-charge and encouraged practice in conversational skills between his eight U.S. students and their local French-speaking Malian counterparts.

In appreciation of this support, Esquith, who saw the university library’s need for philosophy resources, worked with his department colleagues to collect books and journals for Bamako. Many of the volumes were from the department’s own collection.

“As of April 1, 21 of 50 bags had been delivered,” Esquith said. “The faculty and students at Bamoko are eagerly awaiting the rest.”

Additionally, hundreds of pounds of additional books were carried to Mali in July by Esquith, his wife Chris Worland and his current study abroad students.

Esquith spent much of the 2005-06 academic year in Mali on a Fulbright Senior Scholar fellowship. Worland taught English at the Ciwara School, a neighborhood school in a town near Bamako.

Now back in Michigan and working with a Lansing-area international education group, Worland has managed to collect several thousand K-12 books for the Ciwara School. And she and Esquith are working with Mali’s Ministry of Education to collect special education equipment and assessment instruments for the Ciwara School.

For more information on Heart and Sole, contact Ann Cook at cooka@msu.edu. And for more information on the Mali book project, contact Esquith at esquith@msu.edu.