By Mark Lizano; May 11, 2021
The CPP women’s basketball team started their collaboration this year with the nonprofit organization, Soles4Souls, to provide shoes and clothing to those in need. The team collected a total of 395 shoes to donate to the organization.
Since its founding in 2006, Soles4Souls has distributed more than 56.4 million pairs of shoes around the world. Most of the shoes donated to Soles4Souls are from retailers and are mostly shoes with a minor defect or that did not sell well in stores.
Women’s Basketball Head Coach Danelle Bishop was motivated to get involved with Soles4Souls following Cal State San Bernardino’s women’s basketball team’s involvement with the organization.
“I was on Twitter, I kept seeing Cal State Bernardino posting about the Soles4Souls drive, I looked into it and contacted them about it,” said Bishop. “I pushed it to the team as, we’re always trying to beat San Bernardino, we’re going to try to go out and beat them and donate more shoes. You always got to be competitive.”
San Bernardino’s women’s team donated a total of 284 shoes, a number surpassed by the CPP women’s team. For senior forward, Monica Todd, being able to help the community in this manner was very meaningful.
“Ever since I came to CPP, community service has been a huge part of our success; I was excited to do this because I have so many shoes,” said Todd. “Especially as a basketball player, we have basketball shoes to give away, and athletic shoes that I think a lot of kids need and people in general need.”
Players reached out to family and friends to gather as many shoes as possible. One of the players who encouraged their family to contribute was freshman guard Breanne Ha.
“I kind of just asked around my family, because I have a pretty big family on my mom’s side, and they’re all ballers too, so I asked for their shoes and we have little kids, too, who outgrew their shoes,” Ha said.
Freshman forward Roschondra Prince welcomed this experience allowing players to tap into their competitive side.
“This has probably been the longest I have ever gone without playing basketball; it’s struck me kind of hard,” said Prince. “I really liked doing this with the team. Honestly it was kind of like a competition. I was like she donated 15, I want to able to donate 23; it felt good to be able to do that with the team.”
After receiving positive feedback from the team, Bishop plans to seek further opportunities to work with the Soles4Souls organization going forward.
For more information, students can visit https://soles4souls.org/