Not wearing shoes to help kids in third world countries is a slap in the face to the kids in those countries.

Trying to “walk a mile” in their shoes by taking off ours is a joke.

The worst things students who didn’t wear shoes had to encounter was the cold ground, semi-sharp rocks and the occasional piece of glass. Yeah, that’s really fighting the battle when third world kids have to walk every day in worse conditions.

For those who didn’t wear shoes but instead donated money or have bought TOMS shoes: good for you. For those that didn’t wear shoes and didn’t donate: you wasted your time.

You wanted to seem like you were helping a cause when you weren’t. You were just helping yourself to make it seem like you care.

What’s even worse is that there were students that had their shoes on them just in case the weather got bad. I bet third world kids wish they had that option, that when they needed to wear shoes they could just pull them out of their backpacks and put them on.

As for the people yelling at others for wearing shoes: you know who you are and you have no right to judge, because you don’t know what types of charities people are involved in. I’m not saying all donate, but you might be surprised.

I for one got yelled at by someone for wearing shoes when I have a pair of TOMS shoes and have donated money to similar causes, so forgive me if don’t want to play hippy and not wear shoes so I can act like I know how these kids without shoes feel, because the truth is I don’t.

I didn’t walk around shoeless, because it wouldn’t have helped anything. I know that kids around the world are without shoes and they have hard lives. I wouldn’t want to trade my life for theirs even for one day. So I would like to think that if they had the option, they wouldn’t give a second thought about wearing shoes if they had them.

We all take things for granted, whether its food, water or shoes. We have so much of these things that we forget how important they are for others.

So don’t judge, and keep your shoes on if you want to and help donate instead.