A local charity that had been providing gently used shoes to the needy here in the Triangle has added a donation operation for the earthquake victims in Haiti.

And it took almost no time for the group Shoes-4-Souls to collect tens of thousands of donations.

“In the past three days we’ve collected 30,000 pairs of shoes,” said Shoes-4-Souls founder Jennifer Pierce.

Now, the group’s volunteers are rushing to get ready to ship those shoes to Haiti.

Some of the shoes come in a few pairs at a time from people like Leslie Pulley.

“I have a child whose feet are growing rapidly, so I brought two pairs of boys’ shoes and a pair of my old running shoes,” she said.

Sometimes, the donations come in big batches.

“We’ve had some local churches call us and say they’ve already had 700 or a thousand pairs they’ve collected,” said Jennifer Pierce.

Right now, the group’s small offices in Cameron Village are stuffed with all kinds of shoes.

And even thought they’ve collected more than 30,000 pairs, they want more.

“We’re going for 150,000," said Pierce.

As word of the collection effort spreads, the donations multiply.

“It just rang a bell with me, it was the right thing to do” said donor Janet Evans.

As she dropped off several boxes of shoes, she said, “I’ll be back with more and tell others about this too.”

The next step is to get all those shoes to Haiti, but that may take a while, according to officials that Jennifer Pierce has been in contact with.

“In two weeks they’ll be through shipping medical supplies and then they’ll start bringing in clothing and shoes,” she said.

In the meantime, as the collections continue, the group could use another kind of donation too.

“We could definitely use more volunteer help sorting, pairing and bagging,” said Pierce.

The group also needs to collect $4,200 dollars to rent shipping containers which can hold up to 30,000 thousand pairs of shoes each and can be placed on a boat, or cargo plane.