GIVING BACK: Nosotros La Gente helps SMCISD students with free shoes, coats

Nonprofit Nosotros La Gente wants to ensure children in San Marcos have shoes and coats this winter.

Parent liaisons and employees from San Marcos Consolidated ISD and volunteers from Nosotros La Gente met at Walmart on Monday to gather shoes and coats for kids throughout the school district.

“The parent liaisons, right now, have a list of children’s names and the shoe size they need and that’s what they’re filling up their baskets with,” said Celia Barragan, Co-Vice President of Nosotros La Gente. “They’ll take them back to the school and the children will be called in and they’ll be given their pair of shoes to take home — Free. Everything is given to them.”

The nonprofit organization was founded in 1996 by Ralph Gonzales with the mission of assisting families and their needs and promoting equality and justice for all citizens.

Gonzales created the nonprofit organization after not always having shoes when he was a child, Barragan said, adding that when he did have a pair of shoes he often had to place cardboard in them to extend their wear.

“So, he decided he didn’t want to have any children in San Marcos go without shoes,” Barragan said. “So, we started as a family group and then it grew to friends and people said, ‘Tell me about it. Let me help,’ and started volunteering. We’ve been doing this for 27 years.”

Gonzales said he hasn’t forgotten how the community helped him during his childhood.

“People would give me shoes when I was tiny,” Gonzales said. “So they’re giving to me, I’m going to give back.”

With more than 20 years of serving the community, Barragan recalled how Nosotros La Gente has grown.

The organization first started giving away shoes from Payless Shoes, handing out more than 1,200 shoes and having people wait in the cold for long periods of time, Barragan said. But the shoe drive grew too large for the store and moved to Walmart.

Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, Nosotros La Gente hosted the shoe drive inside Walmart where kids would pick up their shoes in person.

“So, we would designate the first Saturday of December, and we would send out through all the parent liaisons that the children that need shoes were to come [to Walmart],” Barragan said. “They would come into the store, we would have these long tables stretched out here by school, they would give us their names and we would check them off. If they weren’t on the list, we put their name on the list, kind of like Santa and they would get a ticket … They would go pick out their pair of shoes that they wanted.”

COVID-19 also hampered the nonprofit’s ability to fund raise. Barragan said funds used to be primarily raised through a turkey dinner where at least 1,000 tickets were usually sold. But she said the organization continues to find a way to keep Gonzales’ mission alive.

“Uncle Ralph, he just keeps going,” Barragan said. “... So, now we’re thinking out of the box. We’re going to come up with other fundraising activities that we’re gonna keep doing. So, Uncle Ralph, this is his dream come true and we’re going to keep it alive.”

Alongside Monday’s shoe collection, Barragan said Nosotros La Gente will continue to check on children in San Marcos to ensure they have shoes throughout the year.

“What we’ve kind of done is in October we had a shoe drive to make sure that any children that came to school in the beginning had shoes that they needed,” Barragan said. “Right now, we want them to have shoes during Christmas. Then, around March, we want to make sure, because kids are growing and their little feet grow, so in March we’ll check again [with] who needs shoes.”

San Marcos Consolidated ISD parent liaisons helped gather shoes as part of nonprofit Nosotros La Gente’s shoe and coat drive, which gives free shoes and coats to district students in need. 

Barragan thanked the volunteers, parent liaisons and community for their help with the shoe and coat drive.

“The people that volunteer for Nosotros La Gente are just amazing,” Barragan said. “They show up all the time. They’re here.

“It’s a pretty awesome thing that [Gonzales] has done and what he will continue to do,” Barragan added. “A lot of the community during COVID, because we couldn’t have the turkey dinner and they’ve known about this forever, they started sending him a check for some money here, some money there. The community has pulled together.”

Residents and community members looking to donate and volunteer can reach the organization through its Facebook page: Nosotros La Gente.