Spending one day without shoes

Ever thought of going around barefoot? Children in Africa do that every day and yesterday some Maltese youngsters spent the day roaming without shoes to raise awareness of the plight of many for whom footwear is a luxury.

Half a dozen teenagers stood barefoot outside Tigné Point in Sliema carrying posters with slogans such as "I'm not wearing shoes because they can't" and "Surrender your shoes".

Many stopped to ask and some, as a gesture of solidarity, took their shoes off for a while and had their photo taken.

The event, One Day Without Shoes, is aimed at inviting people to spend the day or even a few moments without shoes to realise what a difference they make.

Jamie Iain Genovese, the 16-year-old student who organised the event in Malta, said he came across the idea when he heard of Toms, an organisation which came up with the campaign. The company actually sells shoes and pledges a pair to children in underprivileged regions every time they make a sale.

"I discovered that, for some reason, Toms shoes are not available for sale in Malta, so I thought this would be a good idea to raise awareness on this kind of poverty. Who knows, perhaps they can start selling their shoes to Malta," the young man said.

"We're not raising any money; all we're trying to do is raise awareness" he said.

Toms highlights the fact that in Ethiopia, for instance, one million people suffer from a condition called podoconiosis, a debilitating and disfiguring disease caused by walking barefoot in volcanic soil.

Manwel Chetcuti, from Living Waters, a missionary group that goes to Ethiopia every year, said there was a very common problem with worms called jiggers that penetrated the skin where they then hatched. "This could be prevented easily with shoes," he said.

He said that to help Ethiopian people, it was best to give money to charities that would then buy the shoes locally, rather than send them over, because the government had very strict importation rules.

For "Ed", who was at the activity, going around barefoot is not something he finds strange - as his hippy attire suggests. "You quickly get used to it," he said.

At one point, a security officer politely asked the activists to move on after receiving complaints from residents who mistook them for beggars.