All Articles, Board Members, Lived Experiences Shared, Mental Health & Well-Being, Serious Mental Illness

Kindness: It’s Like Walking a Mile in Someone Else’s Shoes

February 11, 2022
David Cooper | Eli's Place Founding Director

In the early 1990s I witnessed, through volunteering at various youth and adult shelters in Toronto, the urgent need for new or gently used shoes for those staying there.

I approached a local shoe retailer for a donation of surplus shoes, and the manager furnished the name and number of the owner located in Montreal. After reaching him by phone, he appeared receptive to a donation of surplus shoes sometime in the future. Two weeks later, a truck showed up at my place of work with 213 pairs of brand-new children’s and adult shoes. There was no fanfare, photo-op, and tax receipt needed, just the understanding that there were people in need of shoes.

My mother used to tell my sister and me about growing up in poverty in Toronto in the 1930s. Every year the City authorities would give my mother and her two sisters a pair of gently used shoes to wear. On the surface, this act of charity seemed like a win, but my mother remembered it differently. Why? Because there was a number indelibly etched on the sole of each shoe. My mother recalled how she shuffled her feet in public so that no one could see the number on the soles of those donated shoes that branded her as poor.

The 213 pairs of new shoes I received for distribution to those in need had no distinguishing numbers to stigmatize the kids and adults receiving them. Instead, there was the knowledge that someone cared enough to think about people they did not know—people who shared the same need as everyone for love, home, kinship and dignity.

Like the seams binding our shoes, these are the threads that bind us together as one family in one world.

David Cooper | Eli's Place Founding Director

Founding Director & Board Member at Eli’s Place Residential Treatment and Transition Centre | Website

David, Eli’s father, is a retired business owner with extensive corporate and non-profit experience. Founder of STUFF Canada, a non-profit created in 1999 to reduce homelessness and poverty in Toronto, David was the 2004 recipient of the New Spirit of Community Award, Canadian Centre for Philanthropy, and the Peter F. Drucker Award for NFP Innovation in 2003. David, a suicide loss survivor, is the co-author of Bridge over the River Why, a guide for parents who have lost children to suicide, and is currently a volunteer grief facilitator for the Toronto Distress Center. David is a Founding Board Member of Eli’s Place.