Mom buys entire shoe store to help needy children going back to school

The summer vacation is a time when kids can stop worrying about schoolwork and enjoy some quality time with their families.

But for many parents the prospect of affording all the supplies schools require as well as new clothes for their growing kids can be a worry.

One Arkansas mom decided to do her bit to help those families in her community, and the idea has snowballed.

Carrie Jernigan, a mother of three from Arkansas, was shopping for back-to-school shoes when she suggested something that was initially meant as a joke.

Her eldest daughter asked if they could add a pair of Avenger shoes to the shopping spree at the closing Payless ShoeSource store for her classmate.

As she was paying for her purchases Carrie asked the clerk how much it would cost to buy all the shoes in the store.

She’d meant it as a joke but next thing she knew the regional manager was on the phone asking if her offer was serious, according to Fox News.

‘What have I done?’

“I’m in the schools a lot and where I live we have a very high poverty rate,” Carrie, the president of the Alma School Board, told Fox News.

“My immediate thought was, this could put so many shoes on kids that would not have new shoes to start back to school,” she added.

But after she said it, she started to have second thoughts, “I was thinking, ‘what have I done?'” and said her husband was “going to kill” her for creating such a huge shopping bill.

“We ended up making a deal for the shoes left which was approximately 400 pairs of shoes,” she wrote on her Facebook page.

When Carrie went to collect the shoes the next day staff told her another delivery had come in with hundreds of additional shoes.

Community’s generous donations

Carried ended up buying nearly 1,500 pairs of shoes for an undisclosed amount.

After posting about the event on social media other River Valley residents have generously donated so even more kids can wear new shoes when school starts again next month. Some have also donated other back to school supplies.

Find out more about this big-hearted family in the clip below.

[arve url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BnP0i0K8QxI” /]

We have no idea just how many families struggle to put shoes on their children’s feet let alone afford the list of supplies parents are expected to send their child back to school with.

Thanks to this mom’s big heart and her initiative to help raise awareness, children can look forward to going back to school with the supplies they need and new shoes on their feet.

Please share this story to pay tribute and raise awareness.