Students at Iowa State went without shoes in an interactive walk through sand, gravel and pebbles and on a one-mile walk in an effort to understand what people without shoes must go through every day.

To raise awareness for the suffering shoeless children endure every day, TOMS Shoes came up with the worldwide event “One Day Without Shoes” — an event the Student Union Board put on for its third year at Iowa State on Tuesday.

Without shoes, millions of children are at risk of injury, disease and soil-transmitted infections; some children are not allowed to attend school without shoes, according to onedaywithoutshoes.com.

In the Philippines, 30,000 people live in a landfill where their feet are exposed to broken glass, syringes and debris. Nearly 2 million Kenyan children are infected by jiggers, burrowing fleas that cause painful lesions.

Four million people have podoconiosis, a debilitating and disfiguring soil-based foot disease. More than 700 million people are affected by hookworm, a worm that causes intestinal pain, weakness and cognitive impairment.

Brittney Carpio, SUB awareness director and senior in political science, and Anna Schowe, campus representative for TOMS and junior in apparel, merchandising, design and production, organized this year’s event.

At 2:30 p.m., they laid out a tarp with sand, pebbles and gravel on Central Campus. Participants were asked to walk across the different terrains to get an idea of what children have to walk through every day.

“This day sheds more light on [their experiences],” Carpio said. “It makes it more realistic … this is your way of giving voice to them.”

“All you have to do is go barefoot,” Schowe added. “It’s something you take for granted — putting on shoes in the morning.”

Sean Edwards, open-option sophomore, was the first to walk across the rocky course.

“So many people in the world don’t have shoes,” Edwards said. “People [here] are used to the comfort of shoes. … Without shoes, you’re more directly connected with the earth … it’s a way of becoming more grounded.”

Edwards added that people tend to disassociate themselves from what is important and that One Day Without Shoes is a starting point to understanding there are bigger things out there than someone’s own life.

Lauren Sandstrom, an SUB graduate adviser who worked on the advising committee of the event, said she learned how difficult it must be to live without shoes.

“I literally could only stand on those rocks for five seconds, it hurt so bad,” Sandstrom said. “It really opened my eyes to a lot of the pains and infections people open themselves up to when they can’t afford shoes.”

Following the interactive walk through the different terrains, the group walked the “golden loop” of campus — a one-mile stretch from the Campanile, around the edge of campus and back to the center.

Sandstrom said she hopes to see the event raise awareness to poverty issues worldwide and inspire people to become more involved with TOMS Shoes and events that help “alleviate this worldwide issue.”