Cheryl’s Shoebox Final Days of Giving
Posted on Feb 24, 2020 in Cheryl's Shoebox Blog Ten years ago, Cheryl Schrean saw a need and began taking her daily strolls with her backpack tossed over her shoulder full of shoes. Anytime she noticed someone with worn shoes or no shoes, she would stop them and pull a pair out of her satchel. At one point, she single-handedly collected over 3000 pairs of shoes to take out to the Christmas At the Dump event. Shortly after Cheryl passed, Vicki Steuterville, Michael Hammond, and Jaime Baldridge decided to keep her efforts going and Cheryl’s Shoebox was reborn. Throughout the years, we have received assistance from Dean McConkey, and Mark and Sue Schneider plus countless volunteers who have helped us pass out shoes and make the Cheryl’s Shoebox Summer Bash a huge success. After many years of dedicated service to the community, we discovered that we had outgrown our shoes and it grieves to say that we will be shutting down Cheryl’s Shoebox as soon as our final projects are completed. We estimate that we should have all projects completed by the end of March 2020. Due to our growth over the last 5 years, we were advised that we should seek legal counsel to determine what our responsibility is to the Mexican government since we were no longer just passing shoes out of our backpacks. After hiring an attorney, we were advised that due to the overwhelming support we received from all of you, that our little mom n’ pop charity would basically need to grow into a “full-time business” to continue our success. This would require paying a substantial amount of attorney and filing fees plus monthly reporting, including accounting expenses, to the government in order to move to a large charity status. Our little labor of love was turning into a big business that would not have coincided with the original values of, Cheryl, our much beloved little-old-lady-who-passed-out-shoes. We’ve been very proud of all that we have accomplished over the last several years and we owe it all to your generosity from the very beginning. Our first big shoe give away occurred in Chimo, which is located about 20 minutes south of Yelapa. After a few years of providing shoes to the 3 schools in Chimo, the El Tuito government stepped in and began providing them with new school shoes and backpacks with school supplies each year. We then turned our efforts to...read more