Instead of packing on the calories, this school fundraiser is packing up shoes for needy communities and lightening the load at landfills at the same time.

Organizers Cathy Dao and Abigail Hansted and fellow Sequim High seniors recently wrapped up a shoe drive that exceeded their expectations. On March 31, Dao, Hansted and Calvin Wade were busy packing up what they estimate will be more than 1,000 pairs of shoes donated by community members over the past four weeks.

“I’ve just been overwhelmed by the community’s response,” Dao said.

“All I was expecting was like 200 (pairs),” Hansted said.

Instead, local residents filled donation spots across Sequim that Dao and company will use to donate to Angel Bins, a for-profit recycling company that helps schools and other charitable organizations raise money through the recycling of shoes.

Dao said she was looking for something different in a school fundraiser than the kind that, say, sells doughnuts.

“That doesn’t entice me,” Dao said. “I like finding more creative ways of giving (and) Angel Bins has been doing this for a long time. They also wanted to help the community. (That’s) the added benefit to this.

“It’s turned out pretty well.”

Angel Bins offers no-cost recycling fundraisers to schools and charitable organizations. The organization sends fundraising teams pre-paid shipping labels. Once the boxes of shoes are received at Angel Bins’ Los Angeles warehouse, they are processed for exports to countries in South America and Africa, where small businesses resell them.

The schools and charitable organizations receive funds based on how many pounds of shoes are collected, Dao said.

While Angel Bins offers specific kinds of shoes drive fundraisers (baby, athletic, etc.), Sequim students went for the more generic “mixed” shoe drive, considering the community’s demographics.

The Sequim High seniors said they don’t have a shipping date quite yet, but would be spending a good portion of their spring break boxing up the bounty of shoe donations.

The shoe drive lasted about four weeks, though Dao noted that often as she was gathering shoes at donation bins community members passing by would mention they wanted to contribute and would rush to bring shoes back.

The so-called “hot spots” — locations that seemed to pull a large number of shoes — were Sequim’s YMCA and grocery stores Sunny Farms, QFC and Safeway, as well as the Sequim High School office, Dao said. Walmart also donated 20-30 pairs, she noted.

“We had to use a different appeal at school,” Dao said. She and fellow students developed a competition of sorts, posting a “scoreboard” outside the high-volume Sequim High library. The seniors offered up the challenge to three groups — upperclassmen, underclassmen and staff — and promoted the competition via social media, including videos.

Dao said she was surprised that, after the second week, the underclassmen took the lead with 25 pairs, well ahead of juniors, seniors and staff.

In the end, upperclassmen topped the field with 110 pairs, with freshmen and sophomores contributing 33 and staff 22.

“In the end,” Dao said, “everyone wins.”