Makayla Nash knows how important sneakers are to the students at John Early Middle School in Nashville, Tennessee. Nash works at the school as a restorative specialist counselor; she helps students who’ve been in shelters, on suspension, or generally disruptive get back into the classroom.
For Nash, who’s been obsessed with shoes since she was a child, footwear is a connector between her and the students—they pay attention to what she has on her feet and solicit feedback from her on their outfits. She knows how precious students are with their sneakers when they have a brand new pair on.
“Everybody cares,” Nash says. “When I see kids with their shoes on, they don’t even want to crease them. They walk funny, that way they don’t crease their shoes in the morning.”
She also knows how not having a clean pair can affect their confidence.
“Kids won’t want to walk into the classroom because they have holes in their sneakers,” Nash says, “or because somebody talked about their shoes, or their appearance, or their outfit.”
Nash is trying to close the gap between those groups with Drip Drive, a nonprofit she founded that provides new clothes and sneakers for young students in Nashville. Nash relies on donations and sponsorships to raise money and source items to give away.
Nash set up Drip Drive like a mall, where students can pick out a full outfit to wear to school. Via Nash
At the first Drip Drive event she put on, at John Early in December 2022, kids had access to shoes and apparel from brands like Bape, Jordan, and Nike. She designed the event like a shopping mall, where students could come through and put together a whole outfit for free.
“Some kids actually got their first pair of Jordans that day,” Nash says.
This March, as Nash was working on another Drip Drive event, she started calling big box sneaker stores to place a bulk order of white Nike Air Force 1s to give away. That pursuit led her to Finish Line area manager Courtneay Kellam, who contacted Nash via email to offer 100 pairs for donation. Nash handpicked specific sizes for students who she felt would benefit from a new pair of sneakers.
“Just seeing kids without the resources and not feeling confident coming to school—when you look good, you feel good,” Nash says. “When you want to put nice clothes on, you want to come to school.”
She chose white-on-white Air Force 1s because they are a fresh, accessible sneaker that don’t convey any kind of lower social status. It’s an everyday shoe that nearly everyone can participate in and enjoy, from the artists her students look up to (G Herbo, Gunna) to their middle school peers.
“It’s a universal shoe,” Nash says. “You’ll see rappers wearing it, the ones who have the most money in the world, and you’ll see somebody who can barely afford anything with it. It’s a commonality shoe.”
This month, Nash put on another Drip Drive, this time at Pearl-Cohn High School. The event served a handful of schools on Nashville’s north side, an area that Nash says suffers from low household income and high rates of incarceration.
At the back-to-school event, Finish Line provided Drip Drive with another 100 pairs of Air Force 1s for students, with the Nike socks to match. Nash went viral on social media this week when sneaker blogs started reposting a photo of hers from two weeks ago that shows her sitting in the back of a truck full of sneakers for the drive. She is certain that her students, who are tapped in with sneaker culture on the internet, will see the photo soon enough.
“I’m assuming they’re gonna say something to me by the time they get their phones by lunch time,” Nash says.
She wants the exposure to increase Drip Drive’s reach and bring in more resources for students in Nashville. But she already considers it a success—she’s experienced the gratitude from parents and kids firsthand.
“It’s such a blessing,” Nash says. “It makes me want to tear up every time you see the kids get the Forces.”
Some of them waited until their second day back at school in August to put the shoes on, so as not to look too thirsty, according to Nash. Others came back to John Early Middle School on the following Monday with crispy white Air Force 1s on their feet and have kept them on since.
“It really makes it all worth it,” Nash says. “All the work that I put in, it makes it so worth it when I see them at school. That’s my favorite part.”
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