Families And Friends Invited To Join CROP Walk

More than 2,000 communities are expected to join in walks during the coming year under the banner of CROP, or Communities Responding to Overcome Poverty. The 2007 CROP Walk in Newtown will return to the campus of Fairfield Hills on Sunday, October 21.

While the walks are sponsored locally by five of Newtown’s churches, organizers would like to remind the community that everyone — whether a churchgoer or not — is invited to join the program.

“Everyone is welcome,” said Barbara Bigham, who is helping to organize the October 21 event. “Groups of friends, neighbors, colleagues and families… come out and join us! If you don’t have time to sign up in advance and collect pledges, come walk and make a donation.

“CROP has event set up a website to allow walkers to collect pledges online,” Mrs Bigham added.

Christ the King Lutheran Church, Newtown Congregational Church, Newtown United Methodist Church, St Rose of Lima Roman Catholic Church, and Trinity Episcopal Church have all started to sign up members and rally support for the Walk.

The humanitarian agency Church World Service is the international organizer of CROP Walks.

August marked the 60th anniversary of CROP — the community hunger appeal of Church World Service — and the beginning of the fall CROP Hunger Walks season, in which tens of thousands of people in communities across the US will sacrifice a few hours (and a blister or two) to raise money and show solidarity with impoverished people struggling to become self-sufficient. The CROP Walk motto is, “We walk because they walk.”

Last year it was NUMC’s members who collectively raised more money than any of the other churches in town. NUMC is hoping to take home The Golden Sneaker — a real sneaker that has been painted gold — for a second straight year, but others are hoping to up their fundraising efforts. Aside from the gentle competition that goes on between the town’s churches in collecting pledges, it is a serious effort that gets walkers out of their house for a 2½ mile walk on a Sunday afternoon.

CROP Hunger Walks are unique in that proceeds benefit both domestic and international poverty-reducing efforts.

According to the US Department of Agriculture report “Household Food Security in the United States, 2005,” 11 percent of US homes did not have access “to enough food for an active, healthy life for all household members” at least some time during the year.

“It still surprises some Americans that there are people here in the richest nation in the world who go to bed hungry because they cannot afford to buy food,” said the Rev John L. McCullough, executive director and CEO of Church World Service. “These local CROP Hunger Walks, organized by individuals and faith communities in cities and towns all across the US, raise awareness about hunger and give people a way to help both in their own communities and around the world.”

The first-ever CROP Walks took place in the late 1960s. Over the decades since, more than five million walkers have raised millions of dollars to fight hunger.

An ecumenical program, funds are shared with Catholic Relief Service, Lutheran World Relief, CARE, HOPE, American Jewish Distribution for World Relief, and Christian Reformed.

Up to a quarter of the money donated to CROP Hunger Walk is returned to the community where it was raised to help local soup kitchens and food pantries. Locally funds last year were given to the Salvation Army, Newtown Social Services, FAITH Food Pantry, and Dorothy Day Soup Kitchen in Danbury.

The Newtown churches involved in CROP Walk have information about the event, including sign-up sheets so that walkers may begin collecting pledges immediately. For additional information or to begin an online pledge collection visit CROPWalk.org.