sharad.gopal

On April 16th, TOMS Shoes inspired thousands of people across the world to participate in One Day Without Shoes by going barefoot. Student-organized events took place in nearly 200 cities in the US, Canada, UK, Uruguay, Indonesia, Columbia, New Zealand, France, Italy, Australia, Honduras, and Zimbabwe, over 45,000 people responded to the official Facebook Event, and the Senators of Oklahoma approved a resolution for April 16th to be recognized as One Day Without Shoes. Enduring rocky pavement and unfavorable conditions without shoes was a tangible way for people to make a bold statement for the millions of children who go shoeless everyday.

At Georgia Tech, we celebrated the day long event by going barefoot and then by listening some good old music. After remaining barefoot for almost the entire day, at 5:00pm in the evening we took a barefoot walk starting at the Library of Georgia Tech; going around in a circle till we reached the Campanile through the Student Center.

This was followed by some introductions, conversations and awesome music soon filled the air, and lasted throughout the evening, continuing into the night. The first band to perform was, The Naturals (They can be seen in the picture above, playing barefoot). All the bands were pretty awesome, and this event called ‘Battle of the Bands’ was put on by an organization called Emerging Leaders, which I happen to be a part of. It was an awesome experience, personally and otherwise too. I met a lot of new people and gained some more experience in organizing on campus.

We also raised some money for Friends of TOMS. All in all it was great going barefoot, except for the part when I was riding my bike barefoot; I figured out that the pedals of bikes have some blunt spikes, and they almost killed my sole, well not exactly; I would gladly go barefoot again for a worthy cause. Below is a picture of some of the audience that participated in the walk and are now listening to some cool music. They are barefoot too