As the holiday’s approach, our hearts get better, and our wallets get skinnier. Every holiday season I try to give as much as I can. I always looked out for “buy one get one free” deals. Why couldn’t we have those deals all year round? If companies had those deals now, why couldn’t they have them all the time?

I started to look into the whole “buy one get one free” thing, to see how companies still managed to make money. While researching I stumbled upon Tom's Shoes. Perfect, they basically buy one get one free all year round. I always thought the concept was so cool. You buy a pair of shoes, and the company gives a pair to a child in need. Not only do you get a pair of shoes but you also feel good about buying them. What could possibly be wrong with that? Nothing, right? Wrong. Everything’s wrong with Tom’s Shoes.

The whole idea of buy one, give one seems so touching but in reality does it really help those kids? Where did Blake Myscockie, the founder of Tom’s get his idea from? He went on a trip to Argentina and witnessed kids walking without shoes. He came back to America and invested money into creating Tom’s; money he probably made from his days on reality T.V starring in shows like “The Amazing Race” and “Fox’s Sexiest Bachelor in America Pageant”.

Blake Myscockie used “poverty porn”, an extreme situation and made it look like the most common situation in the whole continent. Africa is so much more than huts, and barefoot children, don’t let profiting charities misguide you. Barefoot children are better than children dying from Malaria, & lack of electricity don’t you think?

So why would the kids take shoes they don’t need? Why would anyone pass up anything that’s given to them? As a society, we’re always talking about giving shoes, and clothes to those in need, which I’m all for, but to an extent. Remember the expression, give a man a fish and you feed him for a day, teach a man to fish and you teach him how to feed himself for a lifetime. Something like that. This whole idea of giving kids free shoes hurts them eventually.

There are shoemakers, and clothing stores all throughout Africa, and by giving the people of those towns free shoes and clothing we’re hurting this economy. We’re putting people out of jobs, and increasing the rate of unemployment in those towns. Donated shoes and clothes to countries in reduced employment by half. Without shops, and people to make clothes and shoes the town loses its ability to be self-sustainable. Now we've created a dependent community. Yikes.

I always thought if someone bought sixty-dollar pairs of shoes from Tom’s, they get thirty-dollar quality shoes, and the kids on the other side would get thirty-dollar pairs of shoes. That’s not the case, Tom’s shoe’s only cost about four dollars to make. You buy a pair of four-dollar shoes, the kids get a pair of four dollar shoes, and the company gets the remaining fifty-two-dollars. Of course, you could factor in shipping, paying the workers, manufacturing fees, but why not just donate money to African countries instead? Why not fuel their economy instead? What’s the benefit of four-dollar shoes anyways? Think about it, if you can walk on a sidewalk, inside buildings and your Tom’s rip in a couple of months how long will it really last those kids?

So, next time when you buy a pair of Tom’s and think about the children in Africa “living in huts, playing drums, and running around without shoes”, you should really stop and think, is this really helping anyone?

If you’d really like to help African countries, donate money to malaria research, volunteer there, help out organizations that help provide medical help to those countries. Make a real impact.