An Aquinas College student is asking for donations for a local project she hopes will help local kids at schools throughout the city.

Year 12 Aquinas College student Teri Dawson is the brains behind Shoes for Feet, a project which has been run in conjunction with a junior St Vincent de Paul Society action group.

Teri has been an active member of the youth-based group Young Vinnies since the beginning of last year, and is involved in many of their community programs including Loaves and Fishes and Full Stop.

Loaves and Fishes make lunches and deliver them around to schools in the wider Tauranga area, and Full Stop is a dinner delivery service for locals in need, which operates once every other two to four weeks.

Her latest project now aims to provide winter shoes for all primary aged children in the Tauranga area who do not have any.

Teri says the idea came to her during a brainstorming session with the Young Vinnies Group.

'I was out delivering with a different organisation that the St Vincent de Paul run called Loaves and Fishes,” says Teri.

'I noticed so many kids didn't have any shoes on and were walking to school with frozen feet so I thought – I'm sure we can do something about that.

'I brought it up at a Young Vinnies meeting and from there I made a form that went round to all of the schools in Tauranga, either by email or given by hand.

'It told schools what the ideas were and asked if they wanted to be involved.

'It also had how many shoes the school would want and roughly what sizes they would like.

Once the orders for shoes came in St Vincent de Paul donated over 50 pairs of shoes suitable for school children and St Mary's School sent a letter home asking for shoes from the school community.

This resulted in nearly 100 pairs of shoes donated by the families of students.

Armed with boxes of shoes, Teri and three other Young Vinnies members from Aquinas College helped dozens of children from Brookfield and Bellevue Schools find a pair of shoes or two in the collection in a suitable style and size, in their first delivery last week.

'We had two really different experiences when we were giving them out,” says Teri.

'In the first school the children were quite shy and you could tell that they were almost ashamed that they weren't able to have shoes and that they needed other people to help them.

'In the other school it was such an amazing response, they were just so thrilled and it was honestly just like Christmas.

'It was so cute the kids were all smiling and laughing and they were so happy.

'It was just the most amazing thing to see, that we were able to accomplish that.”

Next on the list with a request for shoes is Greerton Village School.

'We're getting ready for our next delivery at Greerton Village as well as a school at Welcome Bay who are also considering being involved.

She says that her school, Aquinas College will be making a donation in the near future and urges that others do the same.

'By the end of next year we're hoping to have helped all schools in the Tauranga area.”

Donations can be made to Tauranga St Vincent de Paul Society at 766 Cameron Road or phone 07 578 8218.