TOMs, are they for the people?

   In 2006, Blake Mycoskie the founded the idea of one for one. One for one being the TOMs organization where if you buy a pair of shoes, a pair will be donated to a person in need. This is why the price of shoes range from fifty dollars or more because the price without One for one would be half that. My issue with this is that the hookworm epidemic is what the whole One for one organization stands on but the money the collect from selling the shoe could ultimately eliminate the issue altogether.

   Over sixty million pairs of TOMs have been given to people in need only beginning to touch the issue of hookworm. There are over seven hundred million people around the world dealing with this issue, a significant amount compared to the number of shoes given to help this issue. That leaves six hundred and forty million people still at risk of attaining hookworm. 

  The only gain in this whole situation is for TOMs and their income. The manufacturing price for these shoes is seven dollars and fifty cents for a pair being made out of canvas paper for the structure and design and organic cotton for the base. The quality is woefully inadequate though the outside looks decently fashionable; not lasting more than a couple months and leaving their mission uncompleted after the first few months.

  The cost for roads in third world countries is three hundred million that's a little more than half of the people who are affected by hookworm being again, seven hundred million people. Since TOMs only brings shoes to select a number of Christian schools, let us say that the school has a number of 1000 kids and each kid gets is promised a pair of TOMs that's a total of twenty-five thousand dollars in shoes being that each pair alone would be at least twenty-five dollars. With the money they used to supply shoes at least the roads in that area could be fixed and maintained and get closer to solving the problem. Making these roads will make a bigger difference than a shoe made out of very destructive material. And if each person donated a dollar at most and least two countries can have the ability to build lasting roads and control the hookworm epidemic; the whole reason behind One for one. 


  I believe that the One for one organization is more a scam for a good name rather than an ability to help those in need. Despite all the children that have been given shoes it does not make a difference if they do not have a lasting solution. Seeing that they were or those who purchased two pairs of TOMs for one donated over sixty million pairs for about twenty-five dollars per shoe and the manufacturing price being seven dollars and fifty cents, the TOMs organization have made $1, 050,000,000 altogether. With this in mind TOMs if a public stock would be a great investment even if their morals are not in the right place.