Six years ago, Charles McCree was homeless and all he had was a dream to somehow help homeless and inner city youth in his community. He put together his vision board with pictures of everything he wanted and started “Charles McCree Presents: Project Walk a Mile in My Shoes” where he brought in brand new or slightly worn shoes to give away to the needy.
Since 2008, Charles and his crew have helped donate more than 8,000 pairs of shoes to kids who have little to nothing while partnering with organizations like Hosea Feed the Hungry, The Boys & Girls Club, Its Cool To Be Smart, My Sister’s House (an organization that helps abused women) and The Covenant House (a shelter for homeless teens).
Even with all that he has accomplished, he has a much bigger vision for his charity so he has now enlisted Oprah Winfrey to help. How’d he do it? By reaching out on Twitter and she responded! The power of social media!
During an inspiring interview with V-103′s Ryan Cameron recently, Charles explained his story and how he actually got Oprah’s attention to help with his charity drive.
On how he came up with the idea on this projectMy charity shoe drive is called ‘Project Walk A Mile In My Shoes.’ I started back in ’08. I’m a dreamer; I actually got my start right here back at this radio station 13 years ago and I’ve been chasing my dreams ever since. As dreamers we all know you hit bumps in the road. In ’08, I found myself homeless and out of work. That year was just a crazy year and I remember saying to God, ‘I want to show you that I still believe that you’re going to give me everything I’m believing for.’ So He gave me the vision to start my shoe drive ‘Walk A Mile In My Shoes’ because people think they know but they have no idea. We all got a story. We all go through things.
The first year we raised a thousand pair of shoes, and after that, every year it just gets bigger, bigger, and bigger. As of today, we raised over 8,000 pairs of shoes.
On how he connected with OprahI used to always say if Oprah Winfrey ever heard about my shoe drive, she would want to help. I’m a person that believes in speaking things into existence and just really believing. A year ago, I had a dream that I was talking to her on a white couch and she gave me all of this advice and I woke up. I do everything via social media; that’s just my thing. I said, ‘I just had the most amazing dream that I spoke to Oprah Winfrey.’ I @’d her. Five minutes later my phone goes off and it says you have a tweet from Oprah and it said, ‘Maybe it wasn’t a dream. Maybe it was real. Whatever I told you, take it and run with it.’ It was just amazing! Then my Twitter blew up and it was crazy.
Then this year, I was watching the OWN Network and she was talking. I tweeted her and I said, ‘Hey, I have a charity shoe drive that I do in Atlanta, would you like to help?’ Ten minutes later, she hit me back and said, ‘Yes, I would. Contact this person and they will connect us.’ The very next day I’m at work, the lady from her office calls me and talks to me for about an hour on the phone. She said, ‘Oprah is so inspired my your shoe drive.’ She said, ‘She wants to do something really big for you. We can’t tell you what it is but whatever you think it is, it’s going to be bigger than that.’
This is amazing! Not just because Oprah said she’d sign on, but because Charles had been speaking life over his dream for so long that he had the boldness to tweet Oprah like, “Yo, you want to do this?” Love it.
From homeless to giving back to the homeless youth. This story only teaches us to never give up and never stop giving back!
Kudos to Charles! Can’t wait to see what he and Oprah have in store!
No comments:
Post a Comment