Ways to Involve Your Congregation
Shoes4Unity Sermon Series
Incorporate Shoes4Unity into your weekly sermons. Centering your message around spiritual social action is a great way to remind your congregation of the importance of giving. For a few suggestions, see our Shoes4Unity Sermon Notes!
Barefoot Walk
Start your program on the right foot! Organize a barefoot walk for your congregation on the first day of your Shoes4Unity event. Have everyone leave their shoes in the car and walk together—through town or just around the parking lot—so they can relate in a small way to the 300 million children in the world who walk barefoot every day.
Team Up
Create teams within your congregation to see who can collect the most! One creative church came up with “Circle of Soles” as a way to involve their youth with the rest of the congregation. They paired each Y.O.U. youth member with two to three adult congregants, and the teams competed for prizes! Getting everyone involved through teams is a great way to ensure your congregation has fun making a difference while getting to know each other better!
Think Outside the Walls
Shoes4Unity doesn’t have to stay within your church walls—you can take it into the community! Encourage congregants to ask their friends and neighbors to make a difference with a donation, or get permission from a supermarket or retail store to set up a booth outside on a sunny Saturday afternoon.
Set Goals
When it comes to setting goals, think in terms of faces, not dollar signs—the goal of Shoes4Unity is to make a difference in people’s lives with the gift of new shoes, and the donations you collect will accomplish that! Set an impact goal for your church and challenge your congregants to meet it. For example, if you’d like to collect $1,000 total, make it your church’s goal to fund new shoes for 10 schools. Create visuals that celebrate your progress every time someone makes a donation. Use the Shoes4Unity mobiles you’ll receive in your supplies package to create a visual for the difference your church is making by hanging them in the church lobby, or near the altar where everyone will see them. You can also make your own visuals! For example, have your youth draw pictures of people, families, schools, or villages, and hang one of their representative pictures up every time you receive another sponsorship!
Get Festive
A good theme never hurts! Organize your Shoes4Unity program around a holiday to help get your congregation into the spirit of giving. Put up a Christmas tree in the lobby and hang the Shoes4Unity mobiles on the tree as ornaments. Implement the program around Valentine’s Day and promote Shoes4Unity as “love in action.” Have your Y.O.U. kids throw a “Share the Luck” St. Patrick’s Day party—show a Shoes4Unity video, talk about how lucky your congregation is to own shoes, and accept Shoes4Unity donations at the party (donation jars make great centerpieces!). Your Shoes4Unity program will be what you make it, so the sky’s the limit when it comes to creativity!
Participate in a Soles4Souls Distribution Trip
Soles4Souls works with hundreds of partners in the distribution of footwear within the United States and around the world. Participating in a Soles4Souls distribution trip is a great way for your youth group or the entire church to see their collection efforts in action (and what better way to use your Shoes4Unity fundraiser earnings?). We will work to find a location that is convenient, and we will handle every detail, from hotel arrangements to guides, and more. If you are interested in more information on how to participate in a Soles4Souls distribution trip, visit http://www.soles4souls.org/areas/trips.html or email .