Cleaning company gives sneakers to people in need following unrest in Philly

PHILADELPHIA, Pa. - S & B Organic Cleaning Company is providing thousands of sneakers to people in need after the recent unrest and looting in Philadelphia.

“We were contracted to clean six sneaker stores in the city of Philadelphia. We went in and separated the trash from the sneakers,” said Sharon Leaks-Morgan, the founder and President/CEO of S & B.

Morgan says that she was shocked when companies informed her that they were going to throw away thousands of shoes that became unsellable after looting.

“Yeah, they told us to throw all of this away because none of them matched,” she said.

Certain individual stores salvaged pairs from their own inventory, but couldn’t do anything with single sneakers. Then, the S & B team asked to take them and avoid throwing the sneakers away.

“So we thought since we’re working at the same stores that they’re all the same shoes, so we brought them back here and we’ve been finding some matches,” Morgan said.

After the company’s work, new brand name sneakers are ready for people in need. They’ve also found many pairs of different style shoes that fit, and can benefit hundreds of people in the area. 

“I really would love for the homeless, I would love for the shelters, Salvation Army, anybody who needs some shoes who wouldn’t be able to afford these kinds of things,” said Morgan. “That would be a great thing to do.”

Now, Morgan needs the help of good hearted people. She was motivated to be kind, but the thousands of sneakers have become a huge undertaking.

“It's very overwhelming. In the midst of all of these shoes, I still have to run my business,” she said.

She is hopeful that an established non-profit will contact her and help get the sneakers to the people who need them.

“I wanna be able to drop shoes off to different organizations and they can take them and give them out as they see fit,” Morgan said.

S & B’s work is another example of how good people can come together to find good in even the most trying situations if their hearts are in the right place.

“The hope is to bring some joy to some people and turn a bad thing into something good,” said Morgan.

Can you help, for goodness sake.

Sharon Leaks-Morgan can be reached at Sharon@sbocs.net.

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