Community Outreach

In an effort to build and foster a globally interactive community of women, SOLE SISTERS has partnered with various non-profit organizations and educational institutions to collaborate with and to promote the services they provide that impact and empower women’s lives. The many success stories that shape the Sole Sisters Project have succeeded with the help of these organizations.:

The Resolana Project builds a safe and challenging learning community behind the walls of the criminal justice system. Resolana helps women to make use of their time in prison by acquiring the skills, tools and resources for a positive reintegration into the lives of their families and communities.

The Resolana Project held a workshop at the Dallas County Jail for female inmates.  Pulitzer Prize winner Victoria Hicks structured this as an art and story writing project. Inmates were asked to document their symbolic journey of where they were , where they are and where they want to go. Twenty women were given a large piece of paper, crayons and a pencil. In this empowering project, the female inmates wrote and drew pictures of their happiest childhood shoes, the Government issued Crocs they wear today and the shoes they envision themselves taking their next steps in – after their release. www.resolana.info

Alley’s House empowers teen mothers and their children to achieve independence through support services, education and mentoring. It exists to break the generational, economic and social impact of teen pregnancy in the community.

Alley’s Houses’ teen mothers are writing a daily journal for us, describing what it’s like to walk a day in their shoes as they struggle with the challenges of motherhood with limited resources.  www.alleyshouse.org

helps women who are homeless, recovering addicts or newly released from prison to seek self-sufficiency by promoting personal growth. The program provides the tools that raise self-esteem, promote ethics and build the kind of confidence necessary to succeed in the workplace.

Attitudes & Attire has an exciting program called “Best Foot Forward” which is a sequence of workshops in which women share their stories as they transform themselves and learn how to re-enter society and the workplace.  Eventually, Every woman gets a new lease on life and a new pair of shoes. www.attitudesandattire.org

Dress for Success promotes the economic independence of disadvantaged women in underserved communities by providing professional attire, a network of support and the career development tools to help women thrive in work and in life.

Dress for Success women let us in on their journeys as they search for jobs, reenter the workforce and take the steps to sustain their financial stability for themselves and their families. www.dressforsuccess.org

The Senior Source is improving the quality of life for older adults in the greater Dallas area.

The Senior Source is maintaining their senior mentorship by sharing the enriching oral histories of their seniors seen through their shoes and providing guidance and wit to their mentees. www.theseniorsource.org

Booker T. Washington High School provides intensive training in the Arts and Academics for career and college readiness for the visual and performing arts world. The school is divided into four arts clusters – music, theater, dance and visual arts.

Booker T. Washington High School students are learning to develop and practice their passion and craft by creating works of art about their personal as well as their families’ or friends’ shoe stories.  Their final submission will be included in their portfolio and the students will receive academic credits for their work.  www.dallasisd.org/btw

Good News Girlz is a Dallas based women’s website about fashion, health, food and travel which focuses on women’s stories and issues, while providing a community for female readers, bloggers and business women to be heard and voice their stories.

Good News Girlz hosted a ‘Statement Shoe’ contest, via their website, which focused on women’s relationships with their footwear as well as the influence shoes have in their personal lives. The winners were featured on the SOLE SISTERS website, sharing the reverence for their favorite pair of shoes while sparking the universal question: What is your defining relationship with your shoes?  www.goodnewsgirlz.com

The University of Texas at Dallas’ Gender Studies Department examines gender studies as a complex social construction that intersects with class, race, age, ethnicity, nationality, sexual orientation, identity and acquaints students with the fundamental methodologies of women’s gender studies.

SOLE SISTERS got UTD students to examine their soles and author their oral history about the identity derived from their shoes. www.utdallas.edu

The Vanderbilt University’s Film Studies Department provides training, background, and experience for students interested in careers in film, media, communications and social relations.

Through interviews, narrative and still images, Film students Katherine Sloan and Katie Ullmann, are producing a portrait of Vanderbilt women seen through their shoe stories. The two will use their documentary as activism for serious issues college women face, such as eating disorders or sexual assault. Hopefully, this project will not only be the beginning of a movement to empower women on the Vanderbilt campus, but also state an example to other universities about the impact of the SOLE SISTERS film project when paired with passionate and creative students.

The University of Sheffield is one of UK’s leading universities as a centre for world-class research in the Sciences, Business, Arts and many more disciplines. The University is rated 10th in the UK, 28th in Europe, and 88th in the world in an annual academic ranking of the top 500 universities worldwide. We are collaborating with the Anthropology Department on a Research Initiative exploring the identity behind women’s shoes and their psychological impact.

New Friends New Life is a faith-based organization located in the Dallas-Fort Worth area that enables women to leave the degradation of the sex industry and to build new lives for themselves and their children. They help women overcome backgrounds of abuse, addiction, poverty, and limited opportunities by providing access to education, job training, interim financial assistance and spiritual support.

We are working with a group of women that have graduated from the New Friends New Life transition program, and are learning about their resilient journey through the creation of their art and writing.