Our Mission

The Dr Foot Foundation is a Social Enterprise incorporated formally in 2013 by Dr Foot Ltd.

Our mission is to reduce the millions of unnecessary deaths that occur each year worldwide-most of them children-from foot related health problems. As health practitioners we are appalled that in the 21st Century, with all of our technological achievements – millions of children are surviving without shoes and contracting deadly diseases and injuries by simply walking to school.
In most developing countries children wearing worn or damaged shoes risk broken glass, discarded metal and raw sewage. Often without any shoes at all. No child deserves to suffer and be in pain as a consequence from a lack of footwear.

Dr Foot Foundation is working with charities to target people who desperately need footwear and ensure shoes get to those who need them most. Dr Foot Foundation also collects used shoes to support micro-business efforts to eradicate poverty.

Did you know your extra shoes can help feed a family?

What is a micro-enterprise programme?

A micro-enterprise programme is a market-based charitable programme that is designed to provide impoverished people in developing nations with the resources to start and maintain their own business. In this way, the charity focuses on long-term development, as opposed to short-term crisis relief. It is the embodiment of the old saying, “Give a man a fish, he will eat for a day; give him a way to fish, and he will eat for a lifetime.”

Why does the Dr Foot Foundation support micro-enterprise?

While there will always be a need to distribute shoes for crisis relief, we believe that micro-enterprise is the best hope to eliminate poverty by giving people a way of supporting themselves and their families. It allows us to utilize used shoes that are inappropriate for crisis relief, such as ‘high-heeled’ shoes and shoes that need cleaning or conditioning in order to be useful. It also provides a low cost source of shoes for the local population without undermining the local economy with a large supply of free shoes.

 

How does Dr Foot Foundation support micro-enterprise?

Dr Foot Foundation contracts with established micro-enterprise distributors to transport and distribute used shoes to Central America, South America and Africa. Once in the country, the distributors’ network of micro-enterprise business operators receives inventories of shoes to sell. In many cases, the operators receive the shoes on credit and only have to pay for the shoes if they sell them. Shoes are in high demand for micro-enterprise because they are universally needed and valued, they can be easily bartered with for other goods and are a tangible commodity that is easy to transport and sell.