Cover the Piggies

Pastor Michael Dowd of the First United Church of Christ, on their program "Cover the Piggies," which collects new and gently used shoes for Easton's children:

​"'Cover the Piggies' is an initiative run by a couple of people in our church; Barbara Parisi, who is our administrative assistant, really had the idea. She saw another community that made sure the kids had new shoes before they went back to school for the first day of school. We realize how important that is for a variety of reasons: one is that kids' feet have grown over the summer so you want to make sure they have the right shoe on. Second, it's really important for everybody to fit in--everybody has new shoes, so we make sure the kids have new shoes. Good shoes for kids are remarkably expensive and in six months, they may be going through another pair. So we thought it would be good for us to look at a large segment of our Easton population and say, 'Can we help those kids get new shoes and go to school proud and happy?' A couple years ago, there was a beautiful little girl and she got a new pair of pink shoes and she was so absolutely excited, she ran all over the place with those new sneakers on, and her mom said, 'Now we have to take those new sneakers off because we want to make sure they're good for the first day of school...' and to see her face, her face began to melt because she was so happy with those shoes."

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