SANTA CLARITA, Calif. – For the past 15 years, 67-year-old Marilyn Pisa has spent her Labor Day morning walking 4.5 miles through the neighborhoods of Valencia and Newhall, Calif., to support her local CROP Hunger Walk, one of some 1,500 events held annually nationwide and deemed the oldest hunger walks in America.
CROP Hunger Walk, sponsored by global humanitarian agency Church World Service, is the only U.S. charity walk that raises funds to help feed hungry people both in local communities and around the world.
Pisa’s local CROP Hunger Walks are organized by Church World Service and Santa Clarita Valley’s Interfaith Council and have raised more than $150,000 over the past 15 years to benefit CWS’s global hunger and poverty programs and the valley’s community food pantries, its only homeless shelter, and the new nonprofit Family Promise of SCV which helps homeless families get back on their feet.
“Too many people go to bed hungry,” Pisa told the Santa Clarita Valley Signal earlier this month.
National reports* on poverty and hunger in the U.S. underscore Pisa’s statement. A United States Department of Agriculture report issued September 7 found that for the third year in a row 1 in 6 Americans live in food insecure households, and that children make up 16.2 million of the 49 million people in the nation who are facing hunger.
A newly released 2010 U.S. Census report pegs poverty at 15.1 percent, which is a 52-year high. Globally, more than a billion people are hungry right now. The Rev. Bert Marshall, New England regional director for Church World Service, adds that “over 36 million of them live in the United States, the wealthiest country on earth. It doesn’t have to be that way.”
Begun in 1969 and staged in major urban areas and small communities nationwide during the spring and fall months, CROP Hunger Walks are grassroots, volunteer-organized, multi-cultural, multi-faith events.
Last year, more than 172,400 adults and children participated in some 1,500 CROP Hunger Walks, which raised $14,189,341.
One quarter of the money raised is donated to local food pantries, community gardens and healthy food projects across the U.S. to help individuals and families who are facing food and nutritional insecurity, many for the first time. The rest of the money raised goes to help build self-reliance, food and nutrition security, clean water resources and livelihoods in some of the world’s most vulnerable communities.
“In our struggling economy, making even one small charitable contribution to one cause can be a challenge,” says Thomas Hampson, CWS director of constituent engagement. “Talk about a hard choice for the compassionate: Give to those in need at home? Or give to the world’s poorest?
“But one small contribution directed through a CROP Hunger Walk isn’t an either-or choice,” he said. “It’s a twofer.”
Hunger walks planned nationwide for World Food Day
For many years, CROP Hunger Walks have been listed as a World Food Day USA activity. This World Food Day (Sunday, Oct. 16), approximately 20 percent of CROP Hunger Walks, in communities like Stoughton, Mass., Frankfort, Ky., and Chicago’s South Side, will honor the cause.
The Red Bank, N.J., CROP Hunger Walk, now entering its fourth decade of fundraising, also will kick off on World Food Day. The annual walks have raised more than $2 million for people in need in their community and worldwide. Last year’s donations of $30,000 and 11,000 pounds of food helped 18 Red Bank hunger programs and food pantries.
Kiss a llama, walk the Mississippi, stop hunger
Each community’s CROP Hunger Walk has its own homegrown flavor – and neither rivers nor prison walls nor economic hardship have been enough to deter supporters from walking for the cause.
In Hudson Falls, N.Y., a town of about 8,000, walkers raise around $40,000 from individual donations and corporate gifts, by using $1 “Help CROP STOP Hunger” sponsorships in local banks, and – arguably one of the most inventive fundraising gambits to come down the trail – staging a community leader Kiss a Llama contest.
Quad City, Iowa’s CROP Hunger Walk, now in its 40th year, takes Walkers from local Christian, Muslim and Jewish faith communities from Davenport, Iowa, over the Centennial Bridge spanning the Mississippi River to Rock Island, Ill., and back. Even before this year’s 6-mile trek kicked off on October 2, the bi-state event had raised $2,000 online.
In Ohio, hard hit by recession and jobs loss, the compassionate are still finding ways to raise donations to help others and having a dose of fun in the process. Mansfield, Ohio’s CROP Walk ends at the historic Richland Carrousel Park, with free rides for walkers, young, old and in between.
Prison group raises $3,100
Last October, a group of visitors from “outside” joined a team of women offenders at the medium-security Decatur Correctional Center in Illinois for their CROP Hunger Walk around the facility grounds.
“The chaplain acknowledged that many of the offenders had contributed toward the event from their meager incomes, and how important that was,” said Julia Jones, associate director of the Illinois Region for Church World Service, who circled the facility’s field house with the walkers.
“Some shared with me that they have learned in prison what it is to help others, and that they are committed to doing that once they get out,” Jones said. “They seemed so appreciative of the opportunity to give to others.” The women’s CROP Hunger Walk raised more than $3,100.
Around the country, campus groups at Boston University, Miami University of Ohio and other colleges also stage CROP Hunger Walks. Corporate supporters as well hold their own CROP walks or contribute donations or grants to walks in their communities.
This season some CROP Hunger Walk regions also will participate in “Share a Meal” events around World Food Day. The global events help increase awareness and understanding of hunger, malnutrition and food insecurity by encouraging people to invite friends, neighbors and family to sit down together, enjoy food, and talk together about the issue of hunger.
For information about joining or organizing a CROP Hunger Walk in your community, see the CROP Hunger Walk interactive map or visit www.cropwalk.org.
* Sources
Household Food Security in the United States in 2010, September 2011
http://www.ers.usda.gov/Publications/ERR125/ERR125.pdf
U.S. Census Bureau, 2010 Current Population Survey, Annual Social and Economic Supplement (ASEC), Poverty, Highlights, September 2011
http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/poverty/about/overview/index.html