The Innovative 'Sophie Boot'


credit: Wikipedia

When Michael and Brittany Urbanowicz's 6-year-old daughter, Sophie, was diagnosed with cerebral palsy, the Indiana couple couldn't find shoes that would fit her ankle-foot orthosis braces.

"We went to nine shoe stores to find a pair of shoes to fit the braces and still could not find shoes to fit over her braces," Brittany says in a press release.

"Despite their efforts, they struggled to find shoes that accommodated Sophie's AFO braces, leaving them feeling like they were failing their daughter in a seemingly simple task."

That's when Brittany came up with the idea for Sophie's Boot, a zipper-and-bracket shoe that Michael says "gives her a sense of normalcy like other little girls with the braces hidden within the shoes, she now looks like the other little girls, and it has built up her confidence level and her energy level to where we haven't seen it before."

According to the Sophie Boot website, Sophie's AFO braces last for four months, but the Sophie Boot decreases in-toeing by 15%, raises the steps per minute metric by 14.86%, and lasts longer than $3,000 AFO braces, which "barely lasted four months due to Sophie's

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Caroline Diehl is a serial social entrepreneur in the impact media space. She is Executive Chair and Founder of the UK’s only charitable and co-operatively owned national broadcast television channel Together TV, the leading broadcaster for social change runs a national TV channel in the UK and digital platform which helps people find inspiration to do good in their lives and communities.



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