Texas youth starts international shoe charity

By Tasha Tsiaperas, The Dallas Morning News

DALLAS — Aarav Chavda was only 12 when he noticed barefoot children walking on unpaved streets in India.

The Dallas native returned from his family trip determined to put shoes on those feet.

Now 17, Aarav has a tax-exempt charity that has given 5,000 pairs of shoes to children in India, China, Mexico and El Salvador, and he is eyeing South Africa for his next international donation.

The Dallas Morning News reports the senior at St. Mark’s School of Texas founded Earthwalkers Charities in February 2012 after collecting more than 500 pairs of shoes and $5,000 in donations during a neighborhood shoe drive the previous fall.

“This wasn’t something I wanted to do temporarily,” he says. “This is something I want to do for a lifetime.”

Since then, the charity has raised almost $12,000 to buy shoes for schoolchildren in poor countries.

In many countries, traipsing barefoot through muddy streets can lead to parasitic infections, sidelining the victims for as long as a month.

One of Earthwalkers’ goals is to prevent the infections through providing shoes and education.

“If you don’t wear shoes, you’re going to get that disease every year,” Aarav says. “It wouldn’t happen here because we have paved roads. We don’t walk through mud.”

But in countries like India, people believe infections to be one of the unavoidable facts of life.

“It’s just assumed that it’s part of the cycle, part of being human,” Aarav says.

Before the first charitable trip to India, Aarav researched the social systems and found that if the charity gives Western shoes, recipients will sell them to be able to feed their families.

“If I take a shoe I can buy in America and I take it over to a kid in India, he’ll actually be able to tell that the shoe is Western. ‘It’s not made here. I can sell this and get a lot more money for it,’ ” Aarav says. “So they’ll sell the tennis shoes.”

The charity partners with local organizations in each country it visits to connect with schools and find local shoes to buy. Many of the schools are also incorporating the shoes into the uniforms to prevent children from selling them.

Earthwalkers donates Western-made shoes in Mexico and to local organizations such as Dress for Success, which provides business clothing to women.

Aarav has committed Earthwalkers to giving shoes to the same schools every year. He is going back to India in March.

“We’re not going to superhero in and superhero out,” he says. “It’s not good to be there for two or three years. It’s good to be there forever.”

His father, Dr. Deepak Chavda, said the decision to return year after year is contrary to Western ideals.

“Here, we want instant gratification and then we forget about it,” he says.

Deepak, an orthopedic surgeon, filed the paperwork to start the charity because Aarav didn’t want to wait until he turned 18. His parents, who were born in India, have both lived in the United States for more than 20 years.

Deepak has also connected his son with doctors and international policy experts for help promoting Earthwalkers. They are working with former ambassador to South Africa Eric Bost to plan this year’s trip there.

Children in remote parts of Africa walk miles barefoot just to attend school. Earthwalkers is one of the few charities focusing solely on shoelesseness, especially among children, says Bost, who has visited 97 countries. He currently works for Texas A&M University in College Station.

“I think it’s important,” he says. “I think it’s wonderful that you have someone who is interested in trying to make a positive difference for people around the world.”

Aarav plans to continue expanding the charity in college. Though he doesn’t know yet which school he’ll attend, he plans to major in either economics or engineering and minor in Mandarin.

He hopes to develop a business to engineer extendable shoes that can last up to three years to give to barefoot children. He views it as a way to help fund Earthwalkers.

“Once I realized the organization was a part of my life . I planned it out for the next 20 years,” he says.

It’s typical of Aarav to commit himself so wholeheartedly to a cause, says Jeanie Laube, a former community service adviser at St. Mark’s. She now serves on the Earthwalkers board.

“His independence and his desire to move ahead was very impressive to me,” she says of one of her first meetings with Aarav. “It was real interesting. He was one of these really self-movers.”

Aarav is a cellist, plays on his school’s golf team and is learning to fly planes. Still, he says his main focus is on service.

Laube calls it Aarav’s calling.

“He found his niche in helping other people,” she says. “He doesn’t do it to be praised. He does it because he sincerely cares for other people.”

One of the challenges Aarav’s charity will face is maintaining momentum, especially once he leaves Dallas for college. He hopes to keep people invested in the organization by showing exactly how severely impoverished people are in other parts of the world.

“Sometimes it’s hard for Americans to understand the degree of poverty that exists outside of America, especially in places like India where fundamental needs like shoes, clothing, like food is nonexistent,” he says.

He admits he has lofty goals, one of which is to help raise people out of poverty starting by giving shoes. But he says service is in his blood.

“I get a lot of my charity sense from my dad and mom,” he says.

His father cites a Sanskrit saying: “Ten tyakten bhunjitha.”

“You enjoy by giving,” he says.