A good pair of shoes is vital for almost every athlete, and students in the kinesiology department are ensuring that the less fortunate aren’t without footwear.

Students in the Sport Studies Association are conducting a Soles4Souls shoe drive until Wednesday. New and gently-used shoes of any kind are welcomed to the drop boxes across campus.

Soles4Souls is a non-profit charity organization that collects new and gently-used shoes to distribute to those in need. Bobbi Knapp, an assistant professor in kinesiology and SSA faculty adviser, said the organization usually distributes the new shoes in the U.S. and the gently-used ones in other countries.

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SSA vice president Ryan Bressner, a senior from Moweaqua studying sport administration, said the group wanted a way to give back to the community. He said it’s also been a learning experience for members because they have to market the drive and ask local businesses for donations.

“As SSA, our main thing is to kind of introduce students to all different areas of the sporting industry,” Bressner said. “And this would be a great way to show students event planning.”

Knapp said the group also held the drive in spring 2010 and collected 3,198 pairs of shoes.

“We haven’t hit that goal yet, but in 2010 we also started out relatively slow,” Knapp said. ” Towards the end we just got piles and piles.”

Bressner said the drive is more organized this year, and he expects the group to collect about the same number of shoes as before.

Knapp said she originally brought the idea of a Soles4Souls drive to the students because she saw it when she was an instructor in the department of kinesiology and physical education at Northern Illinois University.

The charity began when founder and CEO Wayne Elsey felt compelled to help the 2004 tsunami victims in Southeast Asia, according to the Soles4Souls website. He called multiple executives in the footwear industry and collected up to 250,000 pairs of shoes to donate.

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Once Hurricane Katrina hit, the website states, Elsey began collecting again and accumulated more than a million pairs of shoes for the gulf coast. That’s when he decided to create Soles4Souls. The organization has two other branches as well — Clothes4Souls and Hope4Souls.

Knapp said when the SSA took on the drive in 2010, it was in response to the Haiti earthquake. She said the country still asks for shoe donations as disaster clean-up continues.

SSA members will deliver the shoes to a Soles4Souls headquarters in Nashville once the drive is over.

“Some businesses we’ve built a relationship with, and we know we can count on (them) for a small donation to help us get a rental truck to deliver them,” Bressner said. “There’s some that we’ve asked if we could give drop boxes and they were more than willing to.”

Knapp said the group held a sporting goods fundraiser last year and distributed the equipment to local organizations. She said SSA will probably try to have another local drive after Soles4Souls.

It’s easy for athletic majors to understand the need for footwear, because sports require it, Knapp said.

“Shoes are important,” she said. “A lot of the members of the RSO will go on to be coaches or athletic administrators of some sort, and to be active, shoes are important.”