Barefeet

Barefoot running was all the rage a number of years ago. Sports magazines heralded it as the most natural and health beneficial approach to foot care. http://www.runnersworld.com/running-shoes-gear/barefoot-running-minimalism In 2006 a company, TOMS in Los Angeles was set up to provide a pair of shoes for people in need for every shoe consumers bought. I was recently given a pair of these shoes and they are super comfortable, before I’d been quite suspect of them, because despite not wanting to become one of those nay-sayers who creates a ‘damned if you do, damned if you don’t worlds’, I’m often suspect of for-profit efforts in the rich-countries hoping to help the “poor” or “needy” in another part of the world, particularly if it is selling a product produced by those “poor” elsewhere. Why not just promote better labor practices elsewhere? But that is likely unfair – perhaps they are. I certainly want to commend companies taking corporate responsibility seriously – and a look at the TOMS website suggests that they do. http://www.toms.com/corporate-responsibility/l

My red TOMS looking out at the sunset in Sweden.

I was struck when arriving in the capital city of the Solomon Islands how many people were going barefoot. People of all ages and ones with pretty nice clothes, not just people who are obviously homeless or living on the street or without resources to wash their clothes.

This was surprising to me because in my (limited) experience, in a capital city with sidewalks and paved streets – albeit potholed and disrepair ones, usually people are at least wearing flip-flops (thongs).

It reminded me of the Czech family I saw walking in a Prague park in May and a friend in 4^th grade who would walk barefoot in the summer her self-proscribed “foot strengthening” and other funny trends by people with lots of money and thus choice to simulate barefoot running.

----

But keep buying TOMS if you do – they are comfortable and sensible shoes and companies trying to make and effort to raise or consciousness and look at their own labor practices are good. But even better shop at co-op companies or non-profit ones like Ten Thousand Villages. Or H&M is better than Old Navy in the cheap clothing production world.