Cancún to Hand Out 117,000 Pairs of School Sneakers Starting Monday

Cancún, Quintana Roo — Cancún’s municipal Welfare Department will begin handing out free school sneakers on Monday, September 21, in a program covering more than 430 public schools at the preschool, elementary, middle school and special education levels.

Officials expect the rollout to take between six weeks and two months. Berenice Sosa Osorio, who heads the department, urged parents to check the official municipal government channels for the distribution schedule.

She said teams will visit between 45 and 50 schools a day at the start of the program. Students who miss their school’s assigned date will be able to collect their shoes during a follow-up phase at municipal offices.

The program calls for 117,000 pairs of sneakers to be distributed in total. Of those, 113,000 are already stored in municipal warehouses, with the remaining 4,000 due to arrive in the days before deliveries begin.

About 450 municipal employees will fan out each day along 10 simultaneous routes starting at 7 a.m. Mayor Ana Patricia Peralta de la Peña is expected to take part in some of the handouts.

Staff from the Municipal Comptroller’s Office will monitor the routes to certify that the shoes are given away free of charge and that no conditions are attached to receiving them.

“Ten simultaneous routes go out every day, 10 teams that will carry out this delivery. The whole city government is taking part, our mayor is joining in to physically hand out some of them, and every pair is given to the children personally, into their hands,” Sosa Osorio said.

“We start at seven in the morning; in fact, we are already at the warehouses preparing everything from five in the morning,” she added.