Cape Town - Excited pupils at Litha Primary in Gugulethu each received a new pair of school shoes on Wednesday thanks to the generosity of the public and a major retail group.
The handover on Wednesday was the culmination of a project sparked in December by a Facebook post by principal Dr Sedick du Toit.
Du Toit said: "Essentially the project started by me visiting a classroom.I went in and looked at the kids' shoes and actually saw the condition of their shoes and I thought 'no child can possibly come to school like this', you can't be dignified, you're not warm, you're not comfortable because the shoes were really broken.
"I decided to take it to Facebook. I put out a post saying "this is what poverty looks like" and I appealed to people that when they buy their new school shoes if their children's old school shoes were in a good condition donate them to us."
The post was picked up and shared by many, including former pupils of the educator. IOL also wrote a story about Du Toit's appeal for our #WeCare campaign.
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"We got a lot of responses. I spent a lot of evenings driving around picking up ... and it then extended to shirts, and socks and shirts and pants.
In January The Foschini Group (TFG) handed over a cheque to the school of R70 000.
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"Now we have 713 children on the school ...with the other donations taht we;ve received, we actulaly managed to provide a new pair of shoes for every child in the school. So every single child from today will have a new pair of shoes,"' Du Toit said.
"Fir me it;s about dignity. itls about yes you;re poor but there are basic things which evey child should have. One of the things we always say is you cannot teach a hungry child, you also cannot teach a child whose wearing broken clothes and has no dignity. One of the other learners, we gave two shirts earlier in the week, what a difference in that child immediately."