It’s not as well known as the golden arches or the Nike swoosh, but the CROP Hunger Walk logo is increasingly recognized in the tri-village area. Lawn signs, t-shirts, and inserts in church bulletins make visible the red stop sign logo with the words HELP CROP STOP HUNGER.
The CROP brand has been around a long time. CROP has been working to feed hungry people for 60 years, and the Oak Park/River Forest/Forest Park version will kick off it’s 24th annual walk at 2 p.m. on Sunday, May 6, from Pilgrim Congregational Church.
CROP (Communities Responding to Overcome Poverty) is the fundraising arm of Church World Service (CWS), which, according to it’s publication, Service, is “a cooperative ministry of 35 Protestant, Orthodox and Anglican denominations, providing sustainable self-help and development, disaster relief, and refugee assistance in some 80 countries.”
Kathy Fry, the treasurer of the local CROP Walk, known as Hunger Walkathon West, reported that last year’s event involved 379 workers from 33 congregations and organizations and netted $54,359.65. Doug Wyman from Ascension Catholic Church had the highest total of any single walker-$3,110. Of the total amount, 25 percent of the proceeds or $13,685 remained in our area and went to:
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Oak Park-River Forest Food Pantry
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Forest Park Food Pantry
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West Suburban PADS
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Vital Bridges
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Cluster Tutoring Program
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Pine Ave. (Austin) Food Pantry
Sylvia and Gy Menniga, the coordinators of Hunger Walkathon West, are assisted by a planning team of 10 people-a Catholic, a Presbyterian, a United Church of Christ member, a Unitarian, a Methodist and two Lutherans. The team’s goal this year is to raise $60,000 and involve over 400 walkers.
According to CWS, in the last 20 years alone, over five million CROP walkers, participating in 35,888 walks in 2,000 communities across the U.S. have raised $260 million dollars. The first CROP Walk, which took place in Bismarck, N.D. in 1969, raised $25,000.
Previous to that event, CROP was the acronym for Christian Rural Overseas Project, and was an effort by Midwestern farmers to help families in Europe and Asia survive the devastation following World War II. It was a kind of NGO version of the Marshall Plan. What the farmers would do is donate a percentage of their harvest of wheat, corn and beans to a centralized collection site, and the grain would be shipped overseas.
Today the vision of CWS has expanded far beyond the vision of those first farmers in 1947. Here in the U.S., nearly $4 million will go this year to support food banks, pantries, community gardens and other efforts. One project involved a cooperative partnership with Habitat for Humanity, which rebuilt 91 homes destroyed by the hurricanes along the Gulf Coast in its first phase and is in the process of rebuilding 135 more in phase two. CROP money also helped establish or support nine long-term recovery groups following tornadoes in North Carolina and Alabama and after floods in New York, New Mexico and Washington.
An article in Service reported that fewer Afghan women are dying in childbirth and more newborns are reaching their second birthday due to the CWS Pakistan/Afghanistan Community Health Project. In Darfur, CROP money helped deliver essential services to 325,000 people, build 22 health clinics and distributed tents, blankets and other survival items to 65,000 families. In East Africa, CWS is providing clean water by drilling wells and helping build rain water catchments for some of the estimated 60 percent of rural families in the developing world who do not have water that is safe to drink.
CWS states that 82 percent of the money raised on CROP Hunger Walks goes directly to people in need. Some of the remaining 18 percent funds resources to help educate Americans about the issue of hunger. For example, the latest issue in a series for children focuses on the importance of water for health and well-being. “Build A Better World: Water” tells stories about children in Kenya, Vietnam, Indonesia and the U.S. whose lives have been touched by CWS projects.
Participants in CROP walks often hear, “We walk because they walk.” It’s like a mantra emphasizing that CROP walks involve just that, walking 10 kilometers, instead of just donating money, as a way of identifying and empathizing with the majority of the world’s poor who have to walk miles every day for firewood, water and schooling.
But more than anything, says Gy Menninga, “It is a beautiful community effort. Walkers come from many faiths, denominations, schools, and other community organizations and many local businesses contribute supporting funds and in-kind gifts. People of all ages and abilities, including people in wheelchairs, babies in strollers and dogs on leashes join in the event. In addition to the 400 walkers, approximately 80 people help plan, organize and make this event happen. In 23 years, our community with this CROP Walk has raised more than $700,000, a significant contribution to reducing hunger.”
Two new churches, St. John Methodist of Oak Park and St. Eulalia of Maywood, joined the effort this year, Menninga said, and two former participants, Harvard Congregational and St. Edmund, have returned. Sixteen OPRF High School students signed up last Friday during their Volunteer Day.
During the last few years the Internet has increasingly become an important fundraising tool for CROP. Last year, $7,910 was raised on the Internet according to Fry. As of yesterday, they had $3,685 committed via the Web. If you want to find out more about CROP, register as a walker or contribute, go to www.oakparkhungercropwalk.org.
