The Shoe That Grows: 500,000 Kids, 100 Countries, One Crazy Idea | Kenton Lee and Andrew Kroes
6/17/20261 hr 5 min
In 2007, Kenton Lee watched a girl in Kenya walk to church in shoes so small she had cut open the front to let her toes stick out — and wrote an idea in his journal that would take six years and every shoe company's rejection before it became real. The Shoe That Grows, an adjustable sandal that expands five sizes and lasts for years, is now worn by more than 500,000 children across 100 countries. Kenton and his longtime friend and CEO Andrew Kroes join Care More Be Better to share what it takes to build something genuinely useful — the feedback loops, the business model tensions, the manufactured-in-Kenya milestone, and the question that closes the episode: what is your because?
01:41 - How Because International Came To Be
13:00 - The Shoe That Grows Works
27:43 - The Future Of Because International
35:09 - Because International’s Business Model For Their Big Audacious Goal
44:32 - Unlocking Continuous Improvement Through Feedback Loops
51:39 - Responding To The Call To Make A Real Difference
Resources
- Because International — becauseinternational.org
- Kenton Lee on LinkedIn
- Andrew Kroes on LinkedIn
- @becauseinternational on Instagram
- Because International on Facebook
- Because International on YouTube
- Because International on Pinterest
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Clips
Transcript preview
First 90 secondsSpeaker 10:00
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Speaker 10:19
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Speaker 30:29
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Speaker 41:00
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