Whitinsville (MA) Teenagers Step Up to Help Soles4Souls

[from the Worcester Telegram & Gazette]

Students send shoes where they’re needed
WHITINSVILLE — Two Northbridge High School seniors, Joseph Susienka and Casey Petersen, have teamed up with Soles4Souls, an international charity dedicated to providing free footwear to people in desperate need. They ran a shoe drive in the Northbridge Public School system to raise awareness and collect shoes for Tennessee-based Soles4Souls. Between the school district’s four schools during a two-month campaign, 1,079 pairs of shoes were collected.


“Most of us have lots of shoes we no longer wear,” said Casey in a news release. “According to one estimate, more than one billion pair of shoes lie idle in American closets from coast to coast. In spite of that, there are millions of people both in the United States and around the world in desperate need of footwear.”

The young men completed the campaign as their senior year DECA public relations project. DECA is the only national student organization operating through the nation’s schools to attract young people to careers in marketing, management and entrepreneurship. The two will be presenting their project to a panel of judges drawn from business, education and government at the Massachusetts state competition, which occurs March 5-7 in Boston. The Northbridge High School chapter adviser is faculty member Susan Palmer-Howes.