A few days ago, Alberto, one of our boys, came to our house when he should have been in school.
We asked him why he was not in school, and he responded: “I have no shoes; they are broken.” To go to school in Haiti, you need to have a pair of black shoes. After checking and discovering that he was telling us the truth, we went to buy him a new pair of black shoes. We never before realized how much a pair of good shoes can change a person’s life. On that same day, he went to church with us because he had a pair of good shoes. He even behaved differently and was more responsible. Now he seeks different company. He feels important and worth something. A pair of shoes has given him dignity that to some degree had been taken away by his poverty.