Brandon Weinstein has always been an athlete, who through clubs, leagues and school teams, has witnessed firsthand the expenses involved in playing a sport and how not every kid can afford the basic requirements. His twin brother, Jacob, has always found entrepreneurship exciting. “Business intrigues me,” he says. “Start-ups Bitcoin. It’s been instilled in me since forever that it’s important to give back. My brother and I saw an opportunity to do something and we took it.”
At first it was about giving back. That simple. The brothers knew they were blessed in ways others were not. “We understood as a family how important it was to do for others,” says Jordan. “When we attended our first Back To School event with In Jacob’s Shoes and Broward County Schools, I watched these kids’ faces literally light up by the sight of a new pair of shoes. That’s when I understood what I was doing and the power of the charity. You can’t understand it until you see it. Those kids had a huge impact on me.”
To date, Click4Cleats has collected over 3,000 shoes, some with far-reaching impact. “It took almost a year of planning and coordinating, and multiple drop-offs from Miami to Tampa, and eventually Israel, but we got 50 pairs of shoes to the Jaffa Institute,” says Brandon. “A man named Arnie found us on the Internet and it would have been so easy to let this go, but we made it happen.”
Although the brothers are heading to college this fall (Jordan to Northeastern in Boston, and Brandon to American in D.C.), they say they will always be collecting in some form. “When we first set out to do the charity, we had people telling us that it had been done before and not to waste our time,” says Jordan. “We didn’t let the negativity or pessimism stop us. We made the charity unique to us and it has succeeded.”
They are currently training the next generation to take over and give back in their communities as much as possible. “I recently went to Israel and Poland for the March Of Living, a trip that honors the memory of those who died in the Holocaust,” says Brandon. “When giving a speech to my fellow students on the program about our biggest fears in life, I told them that one of my biggest fears was to have regret. I treat everyday as a gift and do not take life and what life has to offer for granted. We call this moment the present because it really is a gift — I, for one, intend to make the most of it.”; Click4Cleats.org.
