Boot drive marches to successful season

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 21/03/2022 (1412 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A few years ago, Robyn Brown was working as a family centre co-ordinator in the Louis Riel School Division. Part of her job was helping to outfit children and families, who needed a little bit of help during the winter season with attire.

She worked with community capacity builders such as Harvest Manitoba and Koats for Kids, but there were a couple of students still in need.

“I had a mom phone me to ask if I had any boots for her kids,” Brown explained in a phone call, as her one-year-old daughter gurgled and cooed in the background. “She couldn’t get her kids to school because they walked, and they didn’t have boots.”

The phone call moved her; a light-bulb moment that made act.

She realized having a warm pair of boots was what paved the way for some people to get to school, and not having this necessity meant they couldn’t go.

Brown put out a call on her personal social media, asking for boots in the size the mother had requested. Perhaps, she thought, someone had a pair lying around.

People began to message her. Some offered boots in varying sizes, some didn’t have boots to give but offered up cash instead. Brown realized maybe more people could use a resource like this.

This is how her movement, Warm Boots, Warm Hearts was born.

Brown said she’s experienced real kindness towards her family when they’ve needed it, and tries to find ways to do the same thing for others.

That October, Brown, along with her husband and young son, began to collect and redistribute winter boots to people who needed them.

They had a system set up, where they’d clean and sanitize the donated boots, before organizing them by size and storing them in a designated area of the garage until they were needed. They were mindful to wash every single pair of boots, so the people receiving them would feel proud to have them.

“If we get a request from a parent, we check to see if they (the adult) need boots, too,” Brown said. “Because we know that a lot of parents will go without to make sure their kids have what they need. We always try to make sure parents are taking care of themselves, too.”

Over the past three years, she has partnered with a handful of local businesses willing to host a donation bin in their shops.

In that first year, she was hoping to collect and distribute 50 pairs of boots, but far surpassed her expectation, with 100 instead.

The following year, she wasn’t sure she could even do the drive because she was pregnant with her daughter and the COVID-19 pandemic made everything uncertain. However, those circumstances didn’t take away the need. So, she marched on and collected 188 pairs of boots.

This year, as the seemingly longest and snowiest winter Winnipeg has endured in a long time starts to thaw, Brown has wrapped another successful boot drive. She collected more than 150 pairs (many of them brand new).

While all sizes are needed, she said there is a huge demand for adult-sized boots, especially in the largest and smallest range.

The whole operation is mostly word of mouth and through career connections. In October, she started a Twitter account (@WarmBootsWpg) to try and spread the word.

They offer city-wide drop off and pick-up, enlisting the help of family when the demand is high. They also have a “no questions asked” policy.

“We figure if you’re asking for boots, you need them,” she said.

shelley.cook@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @ShelleyACook