Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Heart and soles
Project collects used shoes by the pound to fund water systems for villages
Karla Allen, executive director of Ozark Water Projects, will make presentations in schools throughout Arkansas this fall to tell students how shoes can be turned into clean water.
She will describe how donated shoes are collected through drives at schools and churches, loaded by the bagful onto trucks and sold by the pound to exporters for money that will finance the drilling of wells and hand pumps in Haiti.
By the time she leaves, students will have tried on flip-flops made from water bottles, dragged a five-gallon container of water back to their “village,” learned about bartering and watched a video about the organization — all in preparation to kick off a shoe drive at their school.
What students won’t learn during the presentation is that the death of Allen’s husband earlier this year — just a year and two days after the death of their eldest
son — left Allen to head Ozark Water Projects alone.
Suddenly, bags of shoes were no longer being retrieved from schools and churches on time. Paperwork wasn’t completed and mailed in its usual steady flow. It all led Allen to consider dissolving Ozark Water Projects.
“I was doing it all by myself,” she said, “but I was doing it badly.”
For Allen and her husband, Beckham, the idea of helping others gain access to clean water took root during a trip to Africa. After touring a safari, the Allens found themselves in a village where a group of 20 to 30 “beautiful, bright-eyed children” excitedly took the couple by their hands to show them where a well had recently been installed.
“It was like something out of a movie,” Allen said. “It touched us so much that water meant so much to them … even [as] children. You knew that they understood what a difference [the well] would make in their lives.”
Beckham Allen declared that one day he would return to Africa and do something similar to help its residents.
That day came nearly 20 years later, after Beckham had been laid off from his job as a project manager for IBM, and Karla had been teaching business and accounting courses at the high school level.
That day the couple saw George “Shoeman” Hutchings of Eagle Wings Ministries on television, explaining how he funded drilling rigs and created wells for people in Kenya. The Allens contacted Hutchings, who showed them how he’d organized shoe drives to raise money for drilling wells.
Soon afterward, Ozark Water Projects began with Karla, Beckham, and their eldest son, Christopher, as co-founders.
CHAIN REACTION
According to the National Center for Biotechnology Information, Haiti has the lowest rates of access to clean water, toilets and other sanitation sources in the Western Hemisphere. Waterborne diseases abound, and the cholera outbreak that occurred shortly after the 2010 earthquake resulted in more than 600,000 reported cases of cholera and more than 8,000 reported deaths as of June 2013.
Since 2010, Ozark Water Projects has drilled about 25 wells financed by money raised from donated shoes. Shoes sell at an average of 35 cents a pound, depending on how the dollar is faring. Allen estimates that Ozark Water Projects has collected and sold 400,000 pounds of shoes from churches and schools.
A chain reaction begins when a source of clean water is installed. Waterborne illness rates drop and productivity among the residents increases. The responsibility of carrying water from wells to villages traditionally falls to the women and children, who