Ang Peregrino Recommends 5: Buy Shoes. Save Lives.

Web­site: Buy Shoes, Save Lives
URL: http://​www​.buyshoes​save​lives​.com/

KKlash are hand-stitched, locally made shoes tra­di­tion­ally worn by the Kurds in Iraq. The Kurds have been mak­ing this hand-made shoes since 600 BC (accord­ing to one account). Known for their dura­bil­ity and detail, it’s not just merely shoes any­more. Because of the Buy Shoes Save Lives Move­ment, when you buy Klash, you’re not just buy­ing the shoes, you’re sav­ing the lives of Iraqi chil­dren who need heart surgeries.

Delshad has a hole between the ven­tri­cles of his heart, and was sin­gled out by Israeli doc­tors at the Octo­ber screen­ing in Jor­dan as a child who needs surgery in the near future, before pul­monary hyper­ten­sion would leave him inop­er­a­ble. His visa for travel has already been approved, and thanks to your con­tin­ued advo­cacy and pur­chases, BSSL con­tributed almost 40% of the nec­es­sary funds and he will be headed to surgery this week! Some­times we can­not believe this is actu­ally working!

The rea­son for the high inci­dence of cardio-vascular dis­eases in Iraq is not known. Some peo­ple blame Sad­dam Hussein’s chem­i­cal war­fare exper­i­ments with the Kurds for it. What­ever the rea­son, it is a fact that thou­sands of chil­dren in Iraq are suf­fer­ing from Rheumatic Heart Dis­ease caused by Rheumatic Fever. Because of the health­care sit­u­a­tion in the coun­try, very few of these chil­dren sur­vive. It was this sit­u­a­tion that led Jeremy Court­ney and Cody Fisher to estab­lish Buy Shoes. Save Lives.

Jeremy and Cody became fas­ci­nated with Klash and started ask­ing around about how it is made and the peo­ple mak­ing it. They also dis­cov­ered a group: Shevet Achim (Broth­ers Together), a team of Israeli doc­tors who have donated their sur­gi­cal skills to Mus­lim fam­i­lies as their con­tri­bu­tion to the peace process. Jeremy and Cody brought these two (Klash and Shevet Achim) together in order to help the children.

If you want to help the Buy Shoes. Save Lives move­ment, you can do these things: you can buy the shoes your­self (visit this page)–they accept all major credit cards thru Pay­Pal. Or you can blog about it (like what I’m doing now), email this to friends; if you’re in a band or you’re an artist, you can join the the net­work of musi­cians and artists that sup­port the move­ment with pro­ceeds from their albums and con­certs; and if you’re into these things, you can even vol­un­teer as an intern in North­ern Iraq.

In the end, the Buy Shoes Save Lives move­ment is more than just the shoes. It’s prob­a­bly even more than just sav­ing lives. Because when you try to save other lives, you’re actu­ally sav­ing your own–you become a bet­ter per­son and you are never the same again.

This is the man­i­festo of Buy Shoes. Save Lives and this would actu­ally make a good man­i­festo for those involved in fight­ing war and wag­ing peace and help­ing the least and the lost: “We will not embrace the hate handed down to us. We will not retal­i­ate. We will not repay evil with evil. We will use busi­ness — yes, even fash­ion — we will beg; we will teach; we will make film and sing our songs; but what­ever we do we will do with love, because “…love never fails.” Trade and aid; com­merce and char­ity. To give our­selves away. We choose Pre­emp­tive Love.”