Saida was in fourth grade in Tanzania, and she hated school. She didn’t have shoes, so she had to walk barefoot in the dirt, and the dirt where she lives has worms — so Saida had them too. They made her sick, they made her scalp itch like fire and her classmates teased her for it every day. It’s hard to imagine which burned worse.

No matter how well we feed them, if kids are sick with worms, that’s where the nutrition goes. The parasites steal the nutrition, and the children still go without.

But hope came for Saida in a pair of new canvas shoes. Feed the Children partners with TOMS to give shoes to the children in the schools where we work. So now that her deworming treatment has kicked out the parasites that had been robbing Saida’s nutrition, she won’t get them again. She has shoes to protect her — not just from laughter, but from sickness,  and from starvation.