Beth and Carlos Photo: Robert Snyder
With what amounts to three full-time jobs—wife, mother of a 10-year-old-son, and full-time work as a nurse educator– it’s hard to imagine how Beth Simon, coordinator for the Pittsburgh East CROP Hunger Walk, could ever find the time to do what she does to help people in need.
But indeed she has found time– for nearly a decade — and with son Carlos right there beside her.
“CROP Hunger Walk has been a part of his life for eight years now. I really struggle with how much I should do outside of the house with my church and with CROP. But I’m hoping that in the long run this will soak into his brain and when he’s older he’ll see that this was something our family thought was important and, hopefully, it will continue to be important to him.”
Simon credits a strong, hardworking committee of people for the ease with which she moved into a leadership role after serving four years as treasurer for the Walk. “I was really afraid the first year I went from being treasurer to actually coordinating the Walk. I didn’t think I could do it. But what I realized was that the people on the committee have been doing what they do quite well for a long time and they were so very supportive of me and of each other that it just turned out to be not that hard.”
As coordinator, Simon worked with the committee to determine which of the things they were doing worked very well and to add other things to the mix to “keep things fresh,” such as reaching out to “different congregations, different people, and more businesses
Twenty-five percent of the money raised stays in the community to help fund local hunger fighting programs, with the remainder of the money raised by CROP Hunger Walks going to fund CWS programs for vulnerable people, especially women and children, around the world.
Simon says that because of the global nature of CWS work she is able to feel a “strong connection to people around the world such as a woman in Kenya who has safe water to drink because of a CWS-supported program in her village or a Roma child going to classes for the first time at a CWS-supported school in Moldova.
“We are all one. God doesn’t have boundaries and neither should we. It’s not just about giving people food. It is about giving them the resources they need to develop to the point that they can sustain themselves and their families. What we’re working for doesn’t have to do with denominations or churches; it has to do with hunger, with simply being human and caring about people.”
Simon is emphatic that as a Mom, or just as a person, she cannot imagine telling a child, “We don’t have food so you have to go to bed hungry.“
That, for her, is the deciding factor in getting involved. “With that kid in mind, I would say to anyone who wants to be involved and who is as afraid as I was when I first moved into the role of CROP Hunger Walk organizer, to take the same leap of faith I did; to step a little bit outside of your comfort zone, find the support that you need, and just do it.”