I cannot believe we are still talking about TOMS A Day Without Shoes, so I am going to cut through the rhetoric by posing a few questions I think everyone who wears TOMS needs to consider.

Have any of you ever considered what impact flooding local markets with free shoes has? What about on the shoe merchant? Are you going to give him a pair of TOMS when he cannot sell enough shoes to feed his family or send his children to school? Handing out free goods out-competes local markets. Used-clothing imports to Africa caused 50 percent of the increase in unemployment between 1981 and 2000, and between 1992 and 2006, 543,000 Nigerian textile workers lost their jobs due to donated clothing.

You can give a man a fish and he can eat for one day, or you can teach a man to fish and he can eat for a lifetime. These people do not want to be given gifts; they want jobs. They want jobs, education and to be treated with dignity.

There are numerous things that poor villages in Africa need; shoes and used T-shirts are nowhere on that list. You can find a pair of Nikes in almost any major city in the world, not to mention cheap shoes can be made from recycled products such as tires. I reject the notion that shoes are impossible to acquire in third-world countries. If TOMS really cared about these people, they would not sell flimsy shoes for upwards of $120. The people behind TOMS rely on giving people just enough rope to hang themselves. TOMS needs people to remain poor, or else their whole business model is broken. Disagree? Then why are most TOMS made in China instead of the United States or Kenya or Ghana?

By buying in to the genius marketing strategy of TOMS, you are only perpetuating the problem. It is similar to throwing a drowning man a lifejacket instead of pulling him into your own boat – he is still in the water. Give a poor person a pair of TOMS and he is still poor.  A day with handouts is a day without dignity. I encourage everyone to research the anti-TOMS “A Day Without Dignity” campaign for more information on better organizations that not only provide shoes to needy people but that give them jobs and the means to live like normal people.

So while you are all drinking Kool-Aid and giving yourself pats on the back at your UATOMS meetings, consider the shoe merchant and textile worker starving with their children. But, hey, at least they have a pair of trendy shoes, right?

PEACE. LOVE. JOBS.

Ross Owens is a senior majoring in anthropology and German.