Nick Lowinger, a 15-year-old high school student, founded the Gotta Have Sole Foundation which helps provide shoes to homeless children. Nick was nominated this year for CNN Heroes. He talked with SNHU about running the foundation and balancing teenage life in this week’s Social-E Six interview.

What inspired your mission?
Going to shelters when I was 5 and meeting kids who had so little. Most had shoes that were too big or too small if they even had any at all. It had profound effect on me.

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What motivates you?
The smiles on the faces of the kids when they get their new shoes. Knowing I am helping them receive the same opportunities as all kids: going to school consistently because they don’t have to share shoes with a family member, getting to participate in sports and social programming and therefore, fit in better with their peers. (Bullying is reduced).

How do you define success, for you personally, and for your organization?
Success for me personally is achieving what I set out to do, helping my community, family and friends, being a good friend. Success for me through my foundation is reaching more homeless children and hearing what a difference the new shoes make in their lives. To date, I have given footwear to over 11,500 kids in 28 states and am determined to expand my program into all 50 states by the time I graduate high school in 2016. Also, I measure success through my foundation by how much I have influenced others to give back to their communities, and by how I have changed people’s mindset about homelessness. People tend to think of homelessness as people who are living on the streets, dirty, unemployed. In fact, most of the people in the shelters are working people who might have gone from a two-parent working family to a single-parent working family and can no longer make ends meet. They are as deserving of opportunities as people who have a roof over their heads.