The 2,600 Year Old Shoe

Typically, when we ask people what brands they think could survive for 1000 years, they have a hard time wrapping their heads around the concept.

Recently, we were introduced to a brand that has survived for over 2,600 years and going strong! No, it’s not a long-lost chunk of the dead sea scrolls, it’s not a stone tablet or a tool used to build the Parthenon … it’s a pair of shoes.

Jeremy Courtney, Executive Director of a charitable organization called The Preemptive Love Coalition sent us a great story relating how his company is working to provide heart surgeries for children in Iraq.

Through their website, www.buyshoessavelives.com , people can buy a pair of the same shoes that people wore 2,600 years ago. They also give people that opportunity to spread the word and share in the cause by offering tools, website banner graphics, posters to hang around your work or campus, and a bunch of other things to help light a fire and keep their story alive.

In his own words:

I am a civilian American living and working in Iraq to alleviate the physical maladies facing thousands of Iraqi children and working to confront the underlying animosities and hatred that gives such easy rise to terrorism and civil strife.

Practically speaking, in addition to accepting direct donations and doing the normal human rights advocacy stuff, we have co-opted a 2,600 year old hand-made Kurdish shoe and sell (a modernized version) as a way of raising money to fund heart surgeries for impoverished Iraqi children.

Now, the shoe has already proven to be a brand unto itself, surviving in roughly the same hand-made fashion for nearly three millennia. As a shoe company, we have every reason to believe the shoe will last another 1,000 years.

But we’re more interested in the effects - not the product. If, by selling a historic shoe, we can rope in consumer dollars for charitable purposes, and if we effectively administer that money in a way that heals children and distills ethnic strife and religious fundamentalism, then it stands to reason that our work will have a 1,000 year impact.

Why?

Because to save a child’s life today by providing a free heart surgery will have untold residual effects. That child will grow to (hopefully) love the American benefactors who provided his/her surgery, flying in the face of much of the prevalent hatred to Americans in the region today. And as that child grows and has children, the family will be a standing testament to Western compassion, potentially changing entire tribes.

What’s more is that we send these Muslim heart patients to be served by Jewish doctors in Israel who are providing the surgeries at nearly nothing. As Israelis/Jews serve Iraqi/Muslims, we are finding that a number of bright spots and positive stories are happening and that the people themselves are carrying a torch of reconciliation and peace that flies in the face of age-old rhetoric.

If diffusing the pent up hatred between Muslims and Jews isn’t a lasting testament to the power of God to work through something as silly as a sometimes shoe company, then I don’t know what is!

Admittedly, we are a small cog in the process. We will not single-handedly broker peace accords or anything of that magnitude. But we are actively working with top Muslim clerics, Kurdish politicians, and impoverished children to ensure that they are given the chance at a better future.

It is our great hope that the effects of our work will last a thousand years.

Thank you for sharing your story with us, Jeremy. Your efforts are both humbling and inspirational.
We agree that the shoes may just last another 1000 years; your efforts are helping to ensure that legacy.

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