CWS "475 CROP HUNGER WALK" TO BENEFIT NEW YORK CITY FOOD BANK
NEW YORK - Nov. 1, 2006-- On Monday, Nov. 14 employees of several faith organizations and non-profit agencies housed in Interchurch Center will highlight the fact that hunger is a local problem as well as a global one by walking to raise money to help feed hungry people right here in New York City and to support the global work of humanitarian relief agency Church World Service (CWS).
The 475 CROP Hunger Walk kicks off at 12 PM from CWS headquarters at the Interchurch Center, located at 475 Riverside Drive at 120th Street. College students and residents of the surrounding Morningside Heights neighborhood are expected to join the walk.
Proceeds from this year's lunchtime walk will benefit the New York City Food Bank, an agency that supplies community pantries and soup kitchens that offer free food to the city's hungry, and CWS's hunger and poverty fighting programs around the world.
According to the Food Bank study, 'NYC Hunger Experience 2005', almost a third of the city's 8 million residents had trouble affording food in 2005 and a whopping 50 percent of residents with incomes under $25,000 had a hard time affording food. Children and the elderly in the city's five boroughs are especially vulnerable. More than a third of households with children that could barely food simply did not buy any at some time during the year and almost a quarter of the people who use food pantries and soup kitchen for meals are old.
Now in its tenth year, the 475 Walk is one of more than 2,000 CROP Hunger Walks, held in communities across the nation, that bring together people of all faiths to raise money for local hunger-fighting efforts. Participan ts solicit donations from friends, families and merchants, who sponsor their walks.
The 475 WALK will follow a route from the Interchurch Center, located across the street from Riverside Church. Walkers will proceed down 120th Street to Broadway past the campuses of Columbia and Barnard to 110th Street, go east one block to Amsterdam Avenue and up to 116th Street, walking through Columbia and Barnard Campuses and returning to the TIC building. The lunchtime walk takes about an hour and serves to remind both walkers and spectators that hunger is not just a global issue, it is local as well.
Last year, walkers around the country participated in 1,708 CROP Walks. Over the past 20 years, CROP Hunger Walkers have raised more than $270 million, with 25 percent of all money raised staying in the local communities to help stock food pantries that provide emergency assistance to local families. The balance is used to help the relief, development and refugee assistance agency in its efforts to eradicate hunger and poverty around the world.
Church World Service and its partners support emergency feeding programs in drought stricken areas; training in fish farming so that people can add protein to their diets; agricultural tools so that farmers can till their land; and wells in places that once suffered from little access to clean water for drinking, cooking and farming.
The Hunger Walks are an outgrowth of the agency's efforts to help feed starving people in devastated post-World War II Europe by collecting and shipping them grain contributed by Midwestern farmers. They are the only such walks that collect donations for both a local and an international cause.
Those wishing to participate in the 475 Hunger Walk can receive registratio n packets by contacting walk coordinator DeBorah Gray at 212-870-2430, dgray@churchworldservice.org.
Founded in 1946, Church World Service is the relief, development, and refugee assistance agency of 35 Protestant, Orthodox, and Anglican denominations in the United States. For more information about CWS and CROP Hunger Walks visit www.churchworldservice.org or call 888-CWS-CROP.
Media Contacts:
Jesse Glick, Regional Director Church World Service / CROP WALK (860) 347-7821 jglick@churchworldservice.org
Lesley Crosson CWS Media Relations (212) 870-2676 lcrosson@churchworldservice.org