A very sensitive subject to me – don’t tell me who you are – show me. Meaning what you do with your hands are more important than your mouth.
I just had it out with someone over this simple subject. I could blog on this forever but since I am very bottom line, speak with your hands. Show me do not tell me.
I am excited to meet DASH and spend time with him next week in Nashville walking and delivering shoes to the hurting. This excites me and reminds me what it is all about – stay tuned – this will be the next big news next week after the election. Here is a little about this awesome kid!
Dash Continues His Trek for Soles4Souls
Dashiel Alsup, 19, of Coaldale, Colo., recently took a short break from walking across the country barefoot to spend some time with his grandparents in Kennett, Missouri.
Alsup is making the trek in an effort to raise awareness for Soles4Souls. Alsup left Ocean Shores, Wash., on May 2. About 2,600 miles later, he stopped by the house of Orville and Sybil Alsup for a week-long break. He is traveling to Jacksonville, Fla.
Alsup said he is averaging 20 to 25 miles per day. He uses mile markers to keep track of his progress.
“I stick to the main highways,” Alsupsaid. “A lot of people try to give me rides.”
Alsup also keeps a blog of his journey at asinglepebble.blogspot.com and updates it every five to seven days.
“I had some time and wasn’t sure if I was ready to go to college, so I decided to make the trip,” he said. “Then I started looking for a cause to help and I ran across Soles4Souls. It just made sense.”
While Alsup isn’t making the entire trip barefoot, he did say about 70 percent of the trip has been barefoot. He rubs Vaseline on his feet to keep them from taking too much damage.
“There are places I simply can’t go barefoot, like construction zones, really rough patches and such, so I’ve been using flip-flops for those places,” Alsup said. “As long as I can make the majority of the trip barefoot I’ll be satisfied.”
When Alsup leaves Kennett, his next stop will be in Nashville, Tenn. He will be visiting a friend of his father, as well as the Soles4Souls headquarters
Today I was briefed on many aspects of the charity and proud of the team. Clearly our plan is in place and being executed very well. We are into our fourth month of our fiscal year and ahead of budget on donations and have a strong strategy in place the next few months. Where I am most pleased is we give away a pair of shoes every 23 seconds on an annual basis and for the first three months – we are over ever 17 seconds. What that means is we are giving away more shoes than we did prior year and on track to meet our goal of every 19 seconds.
We have a bunch of stuff coming up – I will name a few and ask if you want more information check out www.giveshoes.org —
DECA program is tomorrow. I am so proud of these ladies who put this program together. I met wth 4 of them in my office and was motivated by their drive. My friend and a great friend of the charities – Chris Hope is going to be with them tomorrow afternoon at the assembly! Great job all!
Casting4Souls Fishing trip- this week. David and Kirk, with a group of guys from the footwear industry are heading for the 2nd Fishing Trip in Mexico. This is a fun time of fellowship and the shoe distribution to the local folks is the highlight of the weekend.
Opry Mills Project – We have already received thousands of pairs of shoes to help us build the largest tower of shoes in the world. We should have 100k pairs in the middle of the mall to bring awareness to the 300 Million Shoeless children around the world.
Dash!! – I am thrilled to meet Dash. Dash is walking BAREFOOT across country for Soles4Souls and will be coming thorugh Nashville next week. It is up in the air of when he will be here but trust me, I am clearing my schedule and walking a few miles with this awesome kid who starting in Washingtion State heaidng to Florida. Stay tuned our team will get the update on our site as soon as it gets closer. Dash – welcome to Nashville and looking forward to spending time with you.
50k in 50 days countdown – stay tuned on this one. We are going to end the year out with a bang. We are executing a drive for 50k pairs of shoes campaign with our on line, blog friends, etc. We get alot of people that want to give over the holidays and we have a cool campaign coming out to our on line community!
Holiday Cards – check your mailbox, our year end fundraiser is out and should be delivered very shortly. This is a way for you to further your invovement with our charity and write a check to sponsor a child or many children around the world that have no shoes.
Well more to come, I am watching the Titans play on Monday night and want to get back at it. 7-6 – we are losing at this time but will come back strong – think positive. Hope no overtime, I have a very early flight!
Soles4Souls is rapidly expanding in a huge way. Everyday a new opportunity are presented to us and candidly we have to turn some away or postpone. This is very difficult for us but we have to stay focused and make each event as strong of impact as possible. Today we are ramping up for our Rev Run NYC event this week and the blast off of our Tower of Shoes that is being built in Nashville. The phones and email are blowing up from people that are looking to plug into Soles4Souls. What a great problem to have!
The challenge is the sifting process or (three d’s) I call it – do our homework, determine the fit and decide strategy.
With all of that said, we will execute compelling but meaningful events that are based on the reality of giving shoes to the needy worldwide – everywhere. Today we met with an organization that distributes to over 120 countries, wow – that is double of what we do. There are people in your neighborhood, my neighborhood and around that need help. I challenge you to seek these opportunities and make a difference in peoples lives by doing something!
So is it an opportunity or challenge – you be the judge!
At the same time, Stay tuned — we will have a huge announcement for a event starting in NYC on December 3rd — humm — got you thinking?
Sneakerheads and fashionistas will converge on New York’s Flatiron District to kick off their kicks for a first-of-its-kind charity event at the exclusive Ultra Nightclub. The hotspot will play host to Scion and RunAthletics’ benefit for Soles4Souls, a non-profit organization dedicated to providing essential footwear to those in need around the globe. In lieu of a cash donations, patrons are asked to give two pairs of gently used shoes—be they sneakers, boots, or heels —to gain entry into the exclusive A-list party headlined by Celebrity DJ Mel Debarge.
The hipster and hip-hop communities come together for a night of music and mingling with a Budweiser open bar from 6-8:30pm The event also marks the launch of RunAthletics shoe design contest—aspiring artists can upload their designs at www.runathletics.com/soles4souls for a chance to have 300 limited edition pairs created from their winning entry. A final party in December will announce the winner with honorable guest Reverend Run of Run DMC and RunAthletics.
All footwear dropped off in the RunAthletics boxes will be donated to Soles4Souls who will distribute the shoes to at-risk areas both domestic and abroad. The first charity event of its kind, the Soles4Souls kick-off party is spearheaded by Perez Brown Media, the largest minority-owned online rep firm in the United States.
Check out http://www.lalucas.com/soles4souls/ to design your kicks
The deck consists of cards of 4 colors: red, green, blue, and yellow. The ranks in each color are 0-9. There are 3 “action” cards in each color, labeled “skip”, “draw two”, and “reverse”. There are also special black action cards, “wild” and “wild draw four”. There are two copies of each colored regular and action card, except for the zero card, which only have one per suit. There are four “wild” and “wild draw four” cards each, producing a total of 108 cards. In older versions, only the 6 is underlined to distinguish it from the 9, which is not marked; newer versions have both the 6 and the 9 underlined to further distinguish the two ranks. If a player puts down a “draw 2″ or “wild draw 4″ card, the next player may counteract the penalty with placing another “draw 2″ card or a “wild draw 4″ – leaving the next player to draw the “X” number accumulated with the penalty. It is also possible to add a “reverse” card or “skip” card to either turn the penalty back to the last player or forwards to the next.
Before playing, a dealer must be selected. This is accomplished by drawing cards. The person with the card of the highest face value is the dealer. Only number cards are used for this purpose. Any other cards are then put back into the deck.
After the dealer has been selected, seven cards are dealt to each player, and the top card of the stock is exposed to start the discard pile. If the exposed card has a special ability, it is treated as if the dealer played that card, and the special effect occurs (i.e., skip, draw two, reverse, or wild). If the exposed card is a wild draw four, however, it is returned to the deck and the next card is exposed. Play begins with the person to the left of the dealer, i.e. clockwise.
At each turn, a player may play a card from their hand that matches the color or rank of the top exposed card, or play a wild or wild draw four. If a player has no legal card to play, that player draws the top card of the stock, and may either play it or place it in their hand. After playing a single card or drawing, the next player clockwise takes a turn, or counter-clockwise when a reverse is in effect. If the stock is emptied, the discard pile is shuffled and turned over to replenish the stock.
When a player plays down to only one card, that player is required to say “uno” to warn other players. The hand ends when a player plays all his/her cards.
After a player plays all of their cards, the other players count the number of points pertaining to the values of the cards in their hands. Number cards are face value, colored special cards worth twenty, and wilds worth fifty. The first player to go out receives points for the cards left in his/her opponents’ hands. The first person to reach a certain point value (officially 500) wins.
| Card | Description |
|---|---|
| Draw Two | The next player must draw two cards and lose their turn. |
| Skip | The next player must skip their turn. |
| Reverse | The order of play is reversed from clockwise to counter-clockwise, or from counter-clockwise to clockwise. If the initial exposed card in the discard pile is reverse, then the dealer makes the first play. |
| Wild | The person playing it names a color, and the next legal play must be that color, name or number of last card unless another wild is played. |
| Wild Draw Four | Acts like a wild, but the next player must draw four cards and skip their turn. This card may only be played if the player holding it doesn’t have any card matching the current color. See penalties for more information about this card. |
Note: The newer style English Uno action cards bear symbols which denote their action, except for the Wild cards which still bear the word “Wild.” Before the design change, such cards in English versions of the game bear letters. Especially old English versions can be denoted by the absence of the white rim that surrounds the edge of most Uno cards. Other versions also use symbols and images in both old and new designs, especially those with Wild cards that do not bear the word “Wild.” The Xbox 360 version of the game uses the new English style of the cards in gameplay. There are also language-free versions of the newer styles Uno action cards that do not bear the word “Wild” but have the same styling.
From the official UNO rules:
“A player who forgets to say “UNO” before his/her second-to-last card touches the DISCARD pile, but remembers (and shouts “UNO”) before any other player “catches” him/her, is safe and is not subject to the penalty. Players may not be caught for failure to say “UNO” until his/her second-to-last card touches the DISCARD pile. A player may also not be caught for failure to say “UNO” after the next player begins his/her turn. “Beginning a turn” is defined as either taking a card from the DRAW pile or drawing a card from your hand to play. Players who make card-play suggestions to the other players must draw 2 cards from the DRAW pile. If a player plays a wrong card and it is noticed by any of the other players, he/she must take the card back and take 2 extra cards from the DRAW pile. Play continues with the next person in turn. If a Wild Draw Four card is played illegally (that is, if the player holds a matching color to one that’s on the DISCARD pile) and the person who plays it is challenged, the hand must first be shown to the player who has made the challenge. If the Wild Draw Four card has been played illegally, the offending player must draw 4 cards. If the card has been correctly played, the challenger must draw 2 cards in addition to the 4. The challenge can only be made by the player who is required to pick up the 4 cards after the Wild Draw Four card is laid.” [1]
While we anxiously wait for the world’s current economic turmoil to recede, we all need to remember that billions of people living in poverty around the world are suffering on a daily basis. While those of us living in First World countries may decide to eat out a little less, or carpool a little more, there’s still an easy way to help people in Third World countries without writing a big check to do it.
Most American closets are overflowing with shoes that we no longer wear. These may be pairs that have fallen out of style, or never fit quite right, or were a gift that went (mostly) unworn. Whatever the reason, these shoes are taking up space in our closets when they could be doing a world of good for someone in need.
Consider Soles4Souls as the perfect outlet for these shoes. Each donated pair goes directly to someone in need, whether it’s a child living in a refugee camp in Uganda, an American living in a homeless shelter, or a family digging through the massive city dump in Honduras — these individuals cherish the gift of shoes no matter how good or bad the economy is to the rest of us.
Our shoe recycling program has been featured in many news stories this past year, and while we are grateful for the press, we want to turn the focus onto the people who receive the shoes that we collect. A huge part of that success is your simple decision to go through your closets, attics and garages to supply our warehouse with “gently worn” shoes. They make an enormous difference.
Here are two examples of how your shoes make the difference in someone’s life:
* Bullen Timo, a young man from southern Sudan, received a pair of shoes during our first shoe drop in his war-torn country. He said, “We could not get a pair of shoes even if we had money — no jobs — no products — these shoes are life-changing, and they protect our feet from infection and injury.” Bullen later applied for, and was granted, a student visa to the United States in the same town where our primary warehouse is located. He is now a volunteer for Soles4Souls in order to give back to the charity that gave him his first pair of shoes. “It is very good for me to participate to help in the warehouse so it can help many people like I have been helped,” he said.
* When a Guatemalan woman named Magdalena was eleven years old, she watched her father, uncle, and other family members get shot down by government troops before she fled into the jungle. Today, in Magdalena’s village, residents live on approximately $1 a day. Soles4Souls provides her (and others like her) with free shoes that she cleans and resells to people in her region. This provides a unique microenterprise solution in an otherwise bleak situation. She says, “Life isn’t very fair for a Mayan Guatemalan woman, but this shoe micro-business opportunity is not only important for economic reasons, but gives me significant social ‘worth’ in my family and community as well.”
Through Magdalena’s enterprise, she is generating about $300 per month, or $10 per day, to help feed and clothe her family of five. This will continue to grow and improve the quality of life for Magdelena, her family, and the surrounding community.
This coming holiday season, Soles4Souls will be building the world’s largest tower of shoes in the Nashville area to encourage participation in Soles4Souls’ programs. The Guinness Book of World Records will have staff on hand to count and verify the results.
We are asking for your direct involvement in our mission to “Change the World One Pair at a Time.” You can do this by going through your own inventory of footwear and sending us shoes so that someone else’s life will be greatly improved. Whether you’re 3 or 93, your ‘gently worn’ shoes will be the highlight of someone’s day.
Visit www.giveshoes.org <http://www.giveshoes.org> for details on where to send your shoes, and to read more stories on how the simple gift of shoes means the world to someone in need.
Tiffany’s website is live (www.tiffanyjohnsonlive.com) and getting traction. What great talent she has! I am excited about sharing the stage with her tomorrow night at Belmont. I think when they introduce me, I am going to ask where is John McCane and Barack Obama for a few questions or maybe Joe the plumber! Come join us for a great evening for free - the entry fee is a pair of shoes!
So I hear giggling in the office today and people being a little secret around me. Ok, it is not my birthday and people are hiding a card so what is up? They were hiding the video that Kirk did of me lost in Mexico — so here is the deal. He showed it to me after me asking 22 times and thought I would be mad?? He was quick to say, I was bored this weekend and did it – ok, I guess but why would a guy that just got married and has 4 kids be bored on a weekend? hummm — thanks Kirk for the laugh.
