In an effort spearheaded by Tim Bouchet and Katherine Rantz, there are 231 pairs of shoes in our shipping area, packed and ready to ship to Soles4Souls!

Over the holidays, co-workers, friends, and colleagues from neighboring wineries cleaned out their closets and brought shoes they were no longer wearing to Pride.

Begun in 2004, Soles4Souls was organized by Wayne Elsey, a veteran of the footwear industry, to provide aid to the hundreds of thousands of people impacted by the Asian tsunami, Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Rita. Netting 900,000 pairs of donated shoes to assist with these relief efforts alone, Soles4Souls has now distributed over three million pairs of shoes to people in need in over 40 countries on five continents, including the United States, Honduras, Guatemala, Haiti, Dominican Republic, Swaziland, Sudan, Uganda, Romania, Iraq, Peru, Thailand, and Nepal.

The shoes collected at Pride will be shipped to a warehouse in Las Vegas and then forwarded on to Sole4Soul's hub in Roanoke, Alabama. Once in the distribution center, the shoes will be inspected for suitability, sorted by gender and size, packaged into common Soles4Souls boxes, and shrink-wrapped together onto a shipping pallet. There the footwear will await distribution to the first qualified charity or regional partner who expresses a need.

Watch a video about the beginnings of Soles4Souls and see how you and your company or organization can help people around the world in need simply by doing a little housekeeping.