Hundreds Came Out for Pasos for Oak Cliff’s Inaugural Sneaker Festival

Inside the Kimball High School gym last Saturday, Pasos for Oak Cliff had a lofty goal to hand out shoes, backpacks, and school supplies to 1,000 kids at the inaugural Back to School Sneaker Festival. Besides some last-minute scrambling, by 11 a.m. all 30 or so blue T-shirt-clad volunteers were ready. They had a 40-foot-long wall of sneakers. The Dallas Mavericks had donated hundreds of socks. DJ Inzo was set up. The college and community health booths were ready to go. It was time.

At the beginning, though, barely anyone showed up. “We were worried that not everybody was going to come out to the event,” Pasos for Oak Cliff co-founder Jesse Acosta says. But it didn’t take long for the gym to get packed.

Acosta and Alejandra Zendejas launched Pasos for Oak Cliff as a back-to-school shoe drive in 2020. They wanted to help boost students’ confidence by gifting Nike Air Force 1s and Air Jordans to kids who wouldn’t otherwise be able to afford them. Since then, the organization has given out thousands of shoes to Texas students, provided scholarships, and created educational curriculum like its summer intervention program, Pasos All Stars.

The July 29 sneaker festival, which donated shoes and other resources directly to students, was the first of its kind. “We’ve never done something like that before,” Acosta says. Typically, Pasos pre-packages all the shoes the kids receive, so they don’t know which style shoe they’ve received until they open the box. This time, the kids got to choose. The festival had a display wall of nearly 70 shoe styles. Most of the students were in elementary school, but Pasos had options for kids ranging in age from pre-K to high school.

Each kid had about nine or 10 different options to pick from in their size, Acosta says. But the Pasos team didn’t account for how long that would take. It took 20 minutes for someone to get through the queue. The line of families wrapped around the gym, into the hallway, and around the building outside. The school principal even showed up with more families who had gotten lost on the campus.

“It seemed like it would never end there for a while,” Acosta says. They were worried they wouldn’t be done by 3 p.m., but somehow, he says, they pulled through. In total, Pasos gave out close to 800 sneakers to local kids.

While they were waiting, families could pose at a photo booth. It was fun to see the kids’ personalities shine and watch them show off their shoes, says Acosta, who spent three hours Sunday going through all the images.

Pasos for Oak Cliff will host a birthday party and a fundraising vendor market on August 25 at Four Corners Brewing. They’re also planning a smaller “part two” to distribute the rest of the 1,000 shoes. In October, they’ll put on Pasos Con, another fundraising event, and Paso will have another shoe drive in December.

The festival also had booths with community resources for the families. University of Texas at Austin and Dallas were both present to talk to high school students interested in college. Dallas College Mountain View gave out school supplies and provided G.R.E and “educational resources for the parents as well, in case they want to come back to school or complete their high school certification,” Acosta says. The Dallas Police Department was there to talk to families about their community efforts. Dallas Public Library gave out free books. There were health resources, like A Sister’s Legacy, too. And Somos Tejas registered people to vote.

Acosta says the whole day was unbelievable, from the sponsors they had, like Wingstop and the Mavs, to the scale.

“We didn’t plan on becoming a nonprofit. it was supposed to be a one-time thing—50 pairs of shoes back in 2020,” he says. “So almost three years later, to be able to serve almost 1,000 kids in one day—it’s hard to process.”

He loved seeing the kids’ faces light up and their moods shift as they got their brand-new shoes. Surprisingly, though, most kids opted to put their new kicks right back into the box. Volunteers tried to get them to wear the sneakers out, but, Acosta says, they were “waiting for the first day of school.” They wanted to walk into class with a whole new style.

Head to the gallery below to see scenes from the day.