Part of TOMS Shoes’ effort to provide footwear to children in third-world countries who cannot obtain their own and suffer because of it is an annual One Day Without Shoes. This year, that day is Tuesday. On Central Campus, participating students will gather to walk barefoot through a mixture of sand, gravel and rock that should give them an idea what millions of needy people around the world experience as they walk from place to place. Then, participants will take a barefoot walk around campus.

The idea is very nice, but charity should not be a fashion statement. We should not support charitable causes because it is cool or in vogue to do so. Charities, humanitarian missions and simple acts of kindness should be done because they are right, not because they are popular.

The dangers of using for-profit entities such as TOMS Shoes to carry out charitable missions such as shoe distribution or having pseudo-holidays to raise awareness about an issue are numerous and can prove dangerous to year-round awareness of — and thus meaningful, sustained action on — an issue.

Profit almost always corrupts motives, and always attaches a risk that the activity with which it is paired will become more about the profit — which can be either a matter of money or popularity — than the principles involved. Commodification of or putting a price on moral principles allows us to buy goodness. But it is the gift of our time, not our money, that shows we care.

Relegating certain charitable causes to certain days of the year inevitably leads to forgetting about those same causes the rest of the year. The action they spawn is seldom sustained for many days after the events, as the less ardent or less interested participants drop out because they are busy with other things.

For instance, millions of Christians attend church services on just Easter and Christmas, yet one of the main teachings of Jesus Christ and his apostles was that fellowship with other believers is essential to growing in faith. Or consider Earth Day or First Amendment Day. The environment is important, but not a center-stage policy issue. The dismal statistics on political participation and the dearth of newsworthy political protests should be enough to convince you that our First Amendment rights go unexercised.

Much like political protests, if a charitable cause is really as important as its advocates say it is, they should maintain as ever-present a place in our world as possible. The best way to show how important an issue is, such as shoeless children, is by telling us about it day in and day out, selflessly, without regard to profitability or popularity.