Shoe Drive for Royal Family Kids Camp

As the closing moments of the semester wind down towards the end of April, it can be easy to get caught up with classes and tests. However, Concord University and its faculty are doing things that benefit the community for the less fortunate. Bonner Scholar, Blake Farmer, helped host a successful fundraiser in which people gathered on the track at Callaghan Stadium to walk for abused children. That is not the only thing that is going on to help less fortunate children. As April is observed as Child Abuse Prevention month, Concord faculty have decided what they can do to help. Dr. Lisa Darlington, Associate Professor of Mathematics, has begun a shoe drive on campus and discusses what it means to Concord.

    Dr. Darlington works with a national organization called “Royal Family Kids” and they host camps to assist children who are in the foster care system. Farmer also created his fundraiser to help children involved with this same program. The website, rfk.org, says that the main purpose of the Royal Family Kids Camp is to give foster children ages 6-12 a fun week where they can make positive memories along with receiving royal treatment in a Christian Camp environment. Farmer has worked with the local camp in Princeton for years. Dr. Darlington also assists the camp. “I’m working with the camp in Beckley. There’s camps in Princeton and there’s one in Huntington, so there’s a total of three in the state,” she says.

    The purpose of this shoe drive, Dr. Darlington states, is to help send foster children to camp for a week. She describes the way the camps work by saying, “It costs about $500 to sponsor a camper. It includes transportation, food, clothes and that kind of stuff. The camp is completely funded by donations, so it doesn’t cost the kids, their families, the state or anything like that.” The shoe drive is a new fundraiser that has been introduced to the university. The national organization does this every year. They collect shoes, pay for them by the pound and send them off to several third world countries where they resell them. Per rfk.org/shoedrive, “Through a partnership with a fundraising company, we are offering our camps and clubs 25 cents per pound of shoes collected for the Royal Family Kids Shoe Drive!” The national organization ships free collection bags with rubber bands. They say there is no need to separate the shoes; all that is required is banding the pairs together and placing them in the free collection bag.

    Dr. Darlington discusses the benefits of this initiative. “You’re helping send kids to camp, but you’re also helping people make money in third world countries with that type of business,” she states. As of April 14, she explained that she had just set up the bins that week, so there has been an unfortunate, low success rate. Dr. Darlington remains hopeful that the shoe drive will help and sees the success of it growing by saying, “I’m going to offer extra credit in some of my classes, so I have a feeling [the success] is going to change. I’m also putting a box on the Beckley campus. I just arranged that so people can make donations there as well.” Dr. Darlington hopes that people will get involved on both campuses. She says she just saw an opportunity to do some good in the community and capitalized on it. 

    If anyone wants more information on the camp or the shoe drive, they can go to the website rfk.org. Dr. Darlington states that the Beckley camp is still looking for volunteers. “If anybody is interested, they can talk to me, or they can find the link on the website to search who to contact for that information,” she says.