No child should miss out on school because they don’t have a pair of well-fitting school shoes.
The Coventry Children’s Boot Fund is a Coventry based charity which provides school shoes for families in their time of need. No child should be made to feel different because their circumstances mean they don’t have a well-fitting pair of shoes to wear to school. The damage to their self-esteem and the potential to miss out on education can affect their life chances.
The fund was set up by teaching assistant, George Gibson at South Street School in Hillfields in Coventry in 1889. It was a time of great poverty. The boys were ‘wretchedly-clothed, under-nourished and almost bootless’.