Campus Ministry Sponsors Shoe Drive for Darfur

On a recent April Sunday, April 26, Pastor Ken Vander Wall went to the National Mall in Washington, D.C. to view an event called A Display Of Shoes For Darfur, in which shoes were lined up to draw attention to the victims of the Darfur genocide.

As many as 40,000 pairs of shoes stretched almost as far as a person could see. ”As I saw this display I was vividly reminded of the magnitude of suffering going on in Darfur, the western part of Sudan,” says Vander Wall, a CRC chaplain at the Home Missions-supported campus ministry at William Patterson University in New Jersey. 

Inspired by the visit, Vander Wall decided to organize his own Display of Shoes For Darfur on Sunday, November 15 at a local mall. The Wm. Paterson University Christian Fellowship is sponsoring the display, along with Northeast Community Transformation (Classes Hudson and Hackensack) and Soles4Souls Inc., who will distribute the shoes to homeless shelters across the nation. They hope to obtain 20,000 pairs of shoes, or one pair of shoes for every 20 victims of the tragedy, which has claimed 400,000 lives and left more than 2 million homeless. The conflict in Darfur (in the western part of Sudan) has been called the “worst humanitarian crisis in the world.”

On November 12, Vander Wall will also display collected shoes at the university. “It will be a great display of Jesus’ love for ‘the least of these,’” he says.

For more information or to help, contact Rev Ken Vander Wail.