The United Way of Eastern Utah is hosting a Soles 2 Souls Pop-up Shoe Shop on Saturday, August 12 from 9:00 am to 12:00 pm at the Price City Peace Garden. Castle Country Radio had the opportunity to sit down with Executive Director, Pam Boyd to discuss all the details of the shoe program.

“Our focus with United Way is in three areas, it’s in health, education, financial stability. This hits so squarely on every single one of those areas specifically. We always say, if a kid is worried about their feet, how are they going to study math? You know when you’re really talking about improving a kid’s educational experience, you know it’s such a big job, a big, big, job, how do you do that? Well, you do it in little pieces, and our little piece is we make sure that they have a pair of quality, well-fitting, shoes to start the school year,” explained Boyd. This is the second year that United Way has held a Pop-up Shoe Shop in the area and last year the program they gave out 150 pairs of shoes to children in the Castle Country area.

United Way of Eastern Utah anticipates a huge showing again this year and they are better prepared to accommodate a larger crowd of families who are need.  “We learned so much last year and number one, there’s going to be about 500 pairs of shoes out there for people sizes pre-school through men’s 13, so pre-school through high school. We have good quality footwear. We’ve got measuring devices, we’ve got a lot of volunteers to help us out. Really exciting, we really feel like we’re going to give people a really good option this year,” said Boyd. Families are required to have their children present when receiving a pair of shoes from the program.

This year the Soles 2 Souls Pop-up Shoe Shop will return to Blanding to serve that area again. “So we’ll be going down, we’ll do a pop-up shop in Blanding on September 23 and then we’re going to do one up in Roosevelt. We haven’t nailed down our date yet or a location there but we are going to be doing one up there too. So it’s a great program, it travels, and elbows us to really work in the different parts of our district,” said Boyd. United Way of Eastern Utah serves Carbon, Daggett, Duchesne, Emery, Grand, San Juan and Uinta counties.

Mark your calendars for the next big event the Day of Caring which is scheduled to take place this year on September 9. The Day of Caring event is one of the largest single day of volunteerism in Carbon County and projects include cleaning up yards or lots, garbage pickup on trails, painting at the parks and many more tasks. Starting August 1 United Way will begin taking project applications for the Day of Caring event, so if you know someone in need of assistance submit it as a project.

To learn more about the United Way of Eastern Utah’s programs visit their website at https://www.uweu.org/ or you can call the office at (435) 637-8911.