BUENOS AIRES – In a world where fashion and charity are usually associated with glitzy high-society events, a shoe company has proven that anyone can help save the world – one pair of funky canvas shoes at a time.

"Buy a pair, give a pair" remains the motto of Toms Shoes, which started up four years ago in a little barn outside Buenos Aires, with 12 people stitching together slightly more fashionable versions of the traditional slip-on alpargatas worn by Argentine cowboys for centuries.

The company gave away 10,000 pairs to poor Argentine children that first year, in soup kitchens, schools and Guarani Indian communities.

Helped by a vigorous Internet marketing strategy, Toms Shoes quickly caught on, especially after celebrities like Cameron Diaz and Demi Moore started promoting them.

The company now sells six different models in dozens of colors, even wedding versions. The latest is a wedge that makes women appear a few inches taller.

The giving has expanded, too – to 28 countries and counting, with other factories opening in China and Ethiopia to meet the demand.

A few weeks ago, founder Blake Mycoskie’s dream came true when the company donated its millionth pair of shoes, to a poor child in Argentina’s Misiones province, where Toms has supported Guarani Indian communities.

The milestone is "an opportunity to say thank you to the million people who have bought Toms Shoes," Mycoskie told The Associated Press while visiting Argentina. "We see it as the beginning of what we hope will be something greater – we’re helping kids avoid diseases like hookworm in Guatemala, and podoconiosis in Ethiopia – a terribly debilitating disease that’s completely preventable with shoes."

The latest Toms trend, the wedge, has been huge, Mycoskie said.

"I’ve been having women come to me and say ‘Blake, I love your shoes but I do not wear flats, I’m not that tall.’ For the longest time I was like ‘I don’t know, it doesn’t really fit the particular style of Toms.’ And then I thought, well, in Latin America, the espadrille wedge is traditional – the shoes that have a rope sole. So I decided, why not?

"It took me about a year and a half to design it, but once I did, it just exploded. It’s our No. 1 selling shoe. We can’t make them fast enough," he said.