BALTIMORE — Tony Hardy has been a sneaker fanatic for as long as he can remember and in 2015, he decided to turn that passion into a way to serve others.
"I really didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life," Hardy said. " I [had] just got laid off from my job and I wanted to do something with more purpose."
When he needed help being guided in the right direction, he turned to his mom, Debra. Over breakfast, that's when they came up with the idea that would become Kick Dreams United.
"She told me 'look Tony, do something that’s original to you,' " he recalled. "I've always been a somewhat generous person and she reminded me of that."
For Tony, what happened the next day changed his life. "We got some shoes together that were in the house, went downtown right down in Baltimore man [and] gave them away," he said. "It felt so good. We made something of it."
Before they knew it, this family-run nonprofit had a title, an Instagram page and almost right away, a big task on their hands.
"A company named Shooting Touch reached out and said 'hey can you send us 100 pairs," Tony said. "We didn't have 100 pairs."
At the time, Tony says they had more like five pair and on top of that, this delivery wasn't for a delivery to Baltimore. It was for Africa. How would they pull that off? Tony would tell you, it's divine intervention.
"Kick Dreams United is a ministry of faith, so we feel like we're being used by God," he said.
When friends and family decided to help in the effort, not only were they able to send the 100, but they threw in an extra 300 pairs of fresh sneakers to Rwanda.
These days, KDU, is all over Baltimore and beyond; serving alongside partners like Charm City Run.
While Tony is happy with the support constantly growing, he says now they need the space to match. "We really need a warehouse at this point where we could work out of [and] have our own facility to come in and out of," he said.
When asked what expanding would mean, he responded: "To just be able to put more shoes on people's feet and to just continue to put smiles on more faces,"
Click HERE to donate to Kick Dreams United and learn more about their programs. Donations need to be either new or gently used or, as they call them, "sneakers with dignity."
