Things have been happening in the Midwest, let me tell you folks! We’ve had some complications with blogging these past couple of weeks so we regret we haven’t kept you in the know with all our important, fun news. But here we are making time during an event at UMKC to blog. So what’s happened since our TCU event? Well, Kelsey and I have jokingly named this time period as The Dark Ages. We had wonderful events with AMAZING campus reps and met incredible people, but we were without any women’s shoes for five events in a row. So while we weren’t able to sell many pairs of shoes at those events we had a great time sharing the story of TOMS Shoes with everyone in attendance. Our campus reps had unbelievable patience and understanding attitudes for the mishap with shoes and we improvised the shoe predicament by creating cards for children to receive on future shoe drops. It was always inspiring to read these cards at the end of our events to realize that people truly do care about the children receiving TOMS Shoes and they want those kids to know they are loved and cared for even though we’re separated by hundreds of miles…

We have gone through three different states in the past couple of weeks and feel like our events deserve some recognition. This one is for the campus reps: you all do a lot of hard work and we really appreciate everything you have done. You have welcomed us into your life and it has been a great adventure for sure. You all are loved!
At Baylor University in Waco, TX, Seth Hale, past TOMS summer intern, spoke in morning chapel services as well as evening UBC college service. We had our SYS party at Common Grounds (one of the best coffee shops ever!!), complete with sweet live musicians and delicious coffee drinks. Next was University of Mary Hardin-Baylor, Belton, TX. Lauren Allen, one of the sweetest girls alive, painted TOMS pumpkins for us as well as a hand-crafted TOMS collage. She even had our favorite ice cream waiting for us in her freezer! It was a beautiful day for an outside Style Your Sole party. On our way to Coppell, TX we stopped back through Common Grounds in Waco because we loved it that much. We finally got to Coppell High School after sitting in traffic for a while. Rachel Cowlishaw and her friends created a wonderful event outside of their school’s football stadium, raised money from t-shirts sales to provide art supplies for the SYS party, and encouraged school spirit through the fundraiser for her drill team.
The next day we said goodbye to Texas and headed to Oklahoma’s Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, OK. Jenn Brown and Scott Duchaney did a wonderful job hooking us up with an outside spot for our SYS party and an auditorium for the documentary screening. After the event they showed us around to the hot spots in Tulsa including some local fro-yo and Irish grub. We found our way to the University of Oklahoma in Norman, OK where Amy Henderson, Kojo Yeboah, and Jakeb Black helped put on a fun event at Seven47 which included an awesome 2 story patio setup, live musicians, Red Bull Cola, and lots of fun! Next came a quick detour to Fort Worth to pick up our shipment of shoes and then off to Stillwater, OK. At Oklahoma State University, we met up with campus rep Lauren Coggiola. We watched the documentary and had a question and answer information session about internships and other ways to get involved with TOMS. (Check out www.TOMSshoes.com/jointheteam!) Next we went to UCO where we met up with Natalie Torrey and all of intern Michael Goodman’s best friends. We were loaded with shoes and had a lot of people personalizing their new pair. We had a great night in Edmond and woke up to head back to Tulsa and meet up with the wonderful Jillian at the University of Tulsa. Our event was held at a great coffee shop called The Collective right across from the TU campus. We had live music, tons of art media, creative sandwiches and delightful coffee.
The next morning we headed to Pittsburg, KS. One thing we love about the Midwest: We woke up in Oklahoma, drove through Missouri, and had our event in Kansas. In a matter of 5 minutes we drove through 3 states! Our event at Pitt State was awesome. A big thanks to Hannah for getting the local radio station, news stations, and FMA to help out. We then made the drive back to Norman, OK to be a part of OU’s Parents Weekend. It was a huge game day so there were Sooner fans all over the place. We loved spending time with Amy, Kojo, and Jakeb, who seriously rock for letting us come do two events with them. Boomer Sooner! Then it was back to Kansas to meet up with Shannon at KU. She worked with our campus rep Paul to have an amazing event at Signs of Life coffee shop on Mass Street. We held the SYS in the upstairs art gallery with live music from Kyle Blake and some yummy cookies (thanks Paul)! It was a HUGE event for us because Kelsey and I hit a monumental 1,000 pairs of shoes sold since October 1. We could not be any more excited about putting shoes on the feet of 1,000 children and we send a huge thank you to our campus reps and our support team at TOMS headquarters for being so dedicated and diligent in their work and passion for TOMS. Thank you thank you THANK YOU!!

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Categories: Vagabond Tour Fall 2008No Comments