GREELEY, Colo.—Abraham and Cesar Torres took their first mission trip to Mexico four years ago planning to provide food and school supplies to impoverished children at an orphanage in Chihuahua.
In the hot, dry desert state, they quickly noticed that the roughly 40 children who flocked to them were barefoot.
“Or they had some (shoes) and they were missing soles or they were full of holes or something,” Abraham said. “They kind of tried to hide their feet because they were embarrassed—either because they didn’t have any shoes or because the ones they had were pretty much gone.”
In a day’s time, the brothers from Greeley realized that while the children appreciated a meal and some supplies, what really got them excited and smiling was a new pair of shoes.
“You can see the excitement in their faces,” Abraham said. “It’s something better than having a meal. Even though they might be hungry, shoes are important.”
Abraham, 29, and Cesar, 27, returned to Greeley with a desire to keep helping, and focusing their efforts on raising money to buy shoes. It became the seeds of their charity, Zapatos Sin Fronteras, or Shoes Without Borders, which has, through a dispersal of footwear in each of the past four years, provided shoes to almost 1,000 children in Mexico and Guatemala.
Abraham Torres was recently honored among six finalists for the ninth annual Colorado Rockies Hispanic Adult Leadership Award, which drew about 60 nominations statewide; he was nominated by his employer, Viva Colorado. He was honored before a Rockies game at Coors Field on Sept. 9.
In January, the brothers traveled to Rodeo, Guatemala—where running water is a luxury and many places don’t have electricity—and bought shoes for 350 kids and delivered food to about 700. Just as they have on other trips—three years ago they went to Juarez, Mexico, locale of intense drug-related violence in recent years—they spent a day drawing outlines of children’s feet on pieces of paper.
Immediately, the kids felt special. Then they’d ask the kids about what color they’d like their new shoes to be. The children beamed.
“That’s what makes it special to me—the smiles on the kids’ faces,” Cesar said. “It’s overwhelming. Once you get to these really bad places, these rough places, you get surrounded by kids within 10 to 15 minutes. You get kids everywhere. A lot of them are ashamed. Some are really shy. Others come and hug you.”
Just a quick glimpse into the kids’ lives tells the story. They trek long distances to and from school. They walk everywhere. Barefoot.
When Cesar asked a boy what he wanted for Christmas, he expected to hear “iPod” or “video game” or something similar.
“He said, ‘A pair of shoes.'”
The Torreses have learned of the needy communities through contacts across the border—a pastor, a fire chief, or various friends. A friend who helped the brothers with fundraising in Greeley and Denver—so far, they’ve spent about $30,000 to cover shoes, supplies and travel—is from Guatemala and told them about the need in Rodeo, where 22 percent of people live in extreme poverty and the remainder in poverty.
The project takes considerable effort and time. The brothers work throughout the year to raise money through car washes, garage sales and donations from various benefactors. They’ve had one close scrape so far. They went to heavily militarized Juarez about three years ago, bringing along Cesar’s wife, who didn’t know at the time she was pregnant. They traveled to the day’s shoe giveaway in fire trucks provided by a local fire chief. But on the way back to the city in their own car, using a former Juarez firefighter as their driver, they were stopped at a checkpoint.
“We ended up having soldiers show up and they aimed guns at us,” Cesar said. “They ended up letting us go, but we found out a week later that a family got killed for not stopping at a checkpoint.”
Both Abraham and Cesar are married and have young children—two for Abraham and one for Cesar. They said they couldn’t do Shoes Without Borders without the support of their wives.
“Sometimes you do have to spend some extra money out of your own pocket, so that means not spending it on your family,” Abraham said. “If you don’t have that support, it’s not possible.”
It’s the kind of values the brothers were raised with. Their parents taught them at a young age that “there’s always something you can do,” no matter your own economic condition. The Torres brothers—who have an older sister—grew up in Greeley and still make it their home. Their parents also live in town.
Abraham and Cesar will board a plane in February bound for a new country, Costa Rica. They met a pastor in Greeley a year ago who told them of some rough-and-tumble neighborhoods where children desperately need shoes.
The brothers know that a gesture as simple as presenting a new pair of shoes can give a child not just a lift, but a bona fide self-confidence boost, that lives on in the coveted footwear. It touches the spirit of the children’s parents, too.
“There was a gentleman crying in the corner when we gave the shoes in Guatemala,” Cesar said. “He had a big family and he was crying because he had never been able to afford shoes for his family.”
