Nickie and her boys have been the recipients of football boots and trainers. They live in Hemel Hempstead. This is their story.

Nickie’s two sons have received football boots and astro’s to help relieve some pressure on the family budget. A family budget that has been tightened after Nickie lost her job during the economic downturn due to Covid. Although Nickie is back working again, her hours have been reduced, so it means less money.

With both her boys playing football in Sunday league teams, the financial cost of football subs and annual club fees, on top of the cost of football boots, makes the boys activities a financial strain. By accessing sports shoes through One Impossible Thing, it means one less financial worry for Nickie. After all, her growing sons can go through two sizes of football boots in a season.

And Nickie is also keen to pay the favour forward, so as her boys grow out of the shoes, she passes them back to One Impossible Thing to redistribute. It’s a case of boomerang shoes!

Lynsey and Amber work at Chiltern Academy in Luton. This is their story.

One of our students was filmed as part of a documentary for Channel 4 Dispatches, 'Living in Poverty', and she bravely came and stood in front of us all during a training day and explained what it meant to her and her family to live in poverty. She asked us questions, which we were to answer by a show of hands. Who had ever known what it was like to be poor? Who had known what it was like to grow up not knowing where your next meal was coming from? For me it really struck a chord, because growing up we were poor.

But being poor does not define who you are, it means you have to work a lot harder to achieve your goals. And when you have a young person standing in front of you telling you that she is living in poverty, that there have been moments when she didn't know where her next meal was coming from, or she was scared that she might lose her home, it makes you think. Why shouldn't we do something to help? Why can't we be a positive change and help re-shape the fortunes of the children we teach? The answer is we can!

One Impossible Thing has not only created something truly innovative and inspirational, but something that is changing the lives of people on a daily basis. To date the team at One Impossible Thing have helped change the lives of over 100 families at Chiltern Academy, and each week this number grows. The feedback we have received has been especially positive. Our families are very grateful for help, with most commenting on how it's "one less thing" to worry about. And they want to pay it forward by offering to return the sports shoes to be used again when they're finished with them.

Alexis was one of the first people to donate her running shoes to One Impossible Thing. This is her story.

As a teenager Alexis swam for the Hemel swim club, but by 2014, when she in her early forties, she wasn’t exercising regularly. She was overweight and smoked. Deciding that something needed to change, Alexis started to run with a friend. This led to her sister persuading her to join the local Dacorum running club. Something she thought she would never do. She was petrified! But it wasn’t long before she was leading running groups and competing in races. Most recently she did the virtual London Marathon and had been training for a half marathon, until she had to pull out due to injury.

As a runner, Alexis knows how easy it is to hoard running shoes. She changes her shoes regularly, but she has a sentimental attachment to them. She has been on a journey with each pair so she can’t just put them in the rubbish or in a charity bin where she doesn’t know where they end up. But when she heard about One Impossible Thing she knew she could part ways with her shoes. She knew her shoes would help someone locally and would be cherished by the person they were passed on to.

When Alexis donated her running shoes to One Impossible Thing, she wrote a note about her journey to becoming fit and active. She popped it in with her shoes in the hope that her story would inspire their new owner. Recently, when she saw the One Impossible Thing recycling bin at Hemel Sports Centre, she was quite emotional, knowing how a simple act of recycling could help someone on their own journey to get active. A journey she had embarked on seven years ago. A journey that had changed her life.

Olivia and her mum Suzanne held a sports shoe collection at Olivia’s school in Ley Hill. This is their story.

Olivia loves sport - netball, gymnastics, skateboarding, football, ballet. You name it and Olivia does it. So as you can imagine, she has a number of sports shoes. But like all children, her feet grow quickly and she is forever needing a bigger size of shoe. Meanwhile her outgrown shoes skulk in the midst of her wardrobe.

The idea of giving back is ingrained in Olivia. Last year she donated all her Easter Eggs to DENS. So when Suzanne saw a One Impossible Thing collection basket at the XC Centre, she knew Olivia could help. They gathered all her outgrown sports shoes together ready for One Impossible Thing to redistribute.

Suzanne liked the concept that there shouldn’t be any barrier to children being able to take part in sport. She knew there was nothing wrong with Olivia’s shoes, so why couldn’t they be given to someone who was struggling with the expense of another pair of shoes. Suzanne realised that there must be many other families in Olivia’s school with a similar number of shoes lurking in the house. She put a message out on the Year 6 parents WhatsApp group encouraging others to donate their outgrown shoes. Her and Olivia did a number of collections at the school and now they regularly turn up at One Impossible Thing with dustbin bags full of sports shoes looking for their next enthusiastic owner.