Clarke Central High School student Noah Kilpatrick found a way to connect his passion for running to a community service project for the Eagle Scouts, resulting in a uniquely impactful opportunity that engages multiple communities within Athens.
The Eagle Scout project is the last step in becoming a full Eagle Scout, and scouts submit a detailed proposal to the organization’s board for a project that benefits the community. Once approved, the scout works with a project coach and must show leadership skills by working with a team and members of the community to see their project through. Kilpatrick has developed The Shoebox Project, a sustainable means of recycling gently used athletic shoes and making them accessible to those in need—similar in concept to the Little Free Pantry or Lending Library systems.
As a cross country and track runner as well as member of the Athens Road Runners, Kilpatrick explains that runners have training shoes that they generally stop wearing after three to four months, and these still perfectly fine shoes often pile up in people’s closets. Knowing there’s a surplus of good athletic shoes in the community collecting dust, The Shoebox Project provides people with a way to donate them knowing they’re going to a good cause.
There are three donation bins designed as shoeboxes located at The Sparrow’s Nest on Prince Avenue, the Salvation Army on Hawthorne Avenue and Fleet Feet on South Lumpkin Street. Anyone can donate shoes to these locations during business hours, and anyone in need of free shoes can visit for a free pair.
“Once I got the project approved, I went and met with a bunch of different groups in the community to figure out where I’m going to put these boxes and get their opinions on how I should best create the project so it can benefit the most people, because they know more about the communities that I’m trying to serve than I do,” says Kilpatrick. “I talked to The Sparrow’s Nest, and they really liked the project idea. They were like, ‘Look, we will sponsor your boxes. We’ll sponsor the whole project for you.’”
After a year of planning the project, Kilpatrick kicked off the initial donation drive at Fleet Feet at the end of January. More than 300 shoes were collected. The Salvation Army hosted a giveaway event at the end of February that kicked off the second phase of the project, but moving forward people who wish to donate or pick up shoes will be able to do so at any time.
“Seeing the project progression in my mind and having the motivation to keep going and get the steps happening even though there was no real physical, tangible items that I had for over a year—it was really rewarding when all of a sudden all this time that I’ve spent writing these emails and doing all this stuff, I now have a box and I have like 300 pairs of shoes,” says Kilpatrick. “People are already like, ‘Oh, hey, is it too late?’ I’m getting emails from my fellow runners… I’m like, ‘No, it’s never going to be too late.’ That’s the whole system.”
The Athens Road Runners group owns The Shoebox Project in the sense that it will continue the maintenance and management of the project in the future. One of the challenges has been that there has to be two marketing outreach campaigns: one for people to donate, and one for people to pick up the shoes. However, the system has been running smoothly and will only improve as awareness spreads in the community.
“Outside of the running community, the concept that people just have 80 pairs of shoes lying in their closet is really weird, because why would you have that? It doesn’t make any sense. But this makes perfect sense to me, and it makes perfect sense to runners. The people that I was trying to convince about the project, it was very hard for them to get why it would even work. So, just kind of having to create that elevator pitch and get the ideas across and work that out, that was a big struggle for me. But this project taught me a lot about communication,” says Kilpatrick.
“That part to me as a parent has been really neat to watch, and how he’s had to professionally ask people to set up the volunteers, manage the other scouts, ask his friends, ask adults, you know, that kind of thing,” says Rhia Moreno, Kilpatrick’s mother and project coach, in addition to professor at Augusta University and local runner. “I had to do a rough calculation of our time spent from everybody that has donated time to the project. And I came out to a rough estimate of over 145 hours. So it’s been a lot of work from everybody.”
For more details about the shoebox locations and operation hours, visit bit.ly/4aipSQv.
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