MIDLOTHIAN, Va. -- Emily Dorsey has done a lot of walking with her friends down the halls of Robious Middle School.
She never paid much attention to the shoes she wore until the day her PE teacher talked about a trip to Haiti and the kids there who had no shoes at all.
Emily then realized some kids take a good pair of shoes for granted.
"Sometimes I think they do," Emily said, "because I hear everybody talking about the new shoes they got and whatever. They should just be thankful for what they have today."
Emily started working with Soles4Souls.org, a non-profit fighting poverty through the collection of shoes and clothing.
Emily and her friends started a shoe drive and hoped to collect at least 1,000 pairs of shoes to send to families in need.
Step by step, she planned the whole thing.
She and her father made shoe collection buckets out of large, plastic trash bins.
"I designed the fliers and then my dad helped me cut out the bowl shape (on the bin lid). Then we spray painted the lids," she said.
Getting the collections to the warehouse took a little more help from dad.
"When people drop shoes into the canister we pick them up in a trash or garbage bag and we tie them. Whenever we get a lot of bags we bring them to our home and then we're going to box them up and ship them out."
For Emily, the hard work has been good for the soul.
"That makes me feel good that someone my age could be doing this."
