Toms shoes and the climbing brand So iLL have formed an unlikely partnership to support , a nonprofit co-founded by Kevin Jorgeson聽that聽introduces聽urban kids to climbing.
The two companies a pair of climbing shoes and a pair of street shoes, proceeds of which go directly to building climbing walls in Boys and Girls clubs around the country and purchasing day passes for Boys and Girls club members to visit local climbing gyms.
The world knows Kevin Jorgeson for free climbing the Dawn Wall on Yosemite鈥檚 El Capitan with Tommy Caldwell in 2015. But Jorgeson鈥檚 goal to聽help聽kids get into climbing stretches back before the pair attracted a media storm with their ground-up ascent of the Valley鈥檚 hardest big wall climb. In 2010, Jorgeson built a climbing wall in a Boys and Girls club in Sonoma, California. Wanting to do more, he partnered with So iLL founder Daniel Chancellor, to form 1Climb. In 2017, the organization erected a climbing wall at a Boys and Girls Club in St. Louis, Missouri. This year, thanks to a donation from Toms shoes, it's erecting another wall in Los Angeles.

Fifty percent of proceeds from the limited-edition rock shoes鈥攁 co-branded So iLL climbing shoe ($150)鈥攁nd 25 percent of proceeds from the lifestyle shoe鈥攁 beefed-up version of Toms鈥 Alpargata ($89)鈥攂oth sold through that launched on Tuesday, will聽go聽toward building more climbing walls without the help of major brand donors. (Donors can forgo the shoes and have 100 percent of their money go to building climbing walls). Both shoes are聽based on existing classic So iLL and Toms designs, with made-in-the-USA Dark Matter climbing rubber outsoles.
鈥淵ou can take a passive approach and just watch the sport grow on its natural trajectory, or you can spark it and be proactive,鈥 says Jorgeson in a promotional video on the Indiegogo page. 鈥淭hat鈥檚 what this is all about. Why not bring climbing to the next generation instead of waiting for them to find it?鈥
The shoes are a limited release, available for preorder for the next 30 days.