CJ Bowry, OBE - Founder of Sal's:

I started Sal’s Shoes in 2013 when I couldn’t find an organisation that could tell me where exactly our son Sal’s outgrown (but not outworn) shoes would find their new owners if I donated them. I posted his first few pairs of shoes to the children’s oncology ward at a teaching hospital in Zambia and happened to receive a photo of Sal’s very first pair of shoes on the feet of their new owner. They had become his first pair. It turns out I wasn’t the only one who didn’t know what to do with their children’s preloved shoes.

By harnessing social media for good, word has spread and to date, Sal’s Shoes have now found new feet for over 5,000,000 pairs of shoes in 61 countries, including the U.K.

We collect good-condition, pre-worn, outgrown shoes and via our network of grassroots partners, distribute these shoes to those who need them most. Whilst Sal’s Shoes has always found new feet within the UK, our focus when we first started was sending shoes overseas.

In 2019 we started building our networks so we could distribute our shoes to vulnerable people across the UK. As child poverty rates increase here, UK demand for our shoes has been overwhelming. In 2019 we sent out 15,000 pairs of shoes nationwide, in 2020, it was 30,000 pairs and in 2021 over 45,000 pairs of shoes across the UK. Our UK networks are growing all the time.

We are the only charity in the UK who do what we do.