Fall CROP Hunger Walks Begin

NEW YORK--Humanitarian agency Church World Service today announced the opening of its 2008-2009 CROP Hunger Walk season, during which hunger activists in some 2,000 communities across the nation will begin walking to raise money for the agency's domestic and global anti-hunger programs.

"As the United States and the world come to grips with a food crisis that has seen supplies dwindle and prices skyrocket, more people than ever are finding it difficult to impossible to feed their families, and CROP Hunger Walk (http://www.cropwalk.org/) are more important than ever," says CWS Executive Director John L. McCullough.

According to U.S. and international reports, more than 862 million people in the world go hungry. In the United States, one in 10 households--including 11.7 million children--sometimes do not have enough food for regular meals and in developing countries 60 percent of the preventable childhood deaths are from hunger and malnutrition.

Many factors contribute to hunger in the United States and around the world, including a global food crisis fueled by rising food prices, lower crop yields as a result of climate change, unemployment and poverty.

CROP Hunger Walks--Communities Responding to Overcome Poverty--are unique in that proceeds help to overcome hunger and poverty both domestically and internationally. Internationally, the funds are used to support CWS empowerment programs that bring seeds and tools, wells and water systems, training, and micro-enterprise programs to people struggling to feed their families, develop their communities, and rise out of poverty.

In the U.S. this year, CROP Hunger Walks will share more than $3.7 million with food banks, pantries and community gardens. This support for local efforts is made possible when CROP Hunger Walks opt to return up to 25 percent of their CROP Walk proceeds to hunger-fighting programs in their own community.

The December 2007 hunger survey of 22 cities by the U.S. Conference of Mayors (http://usmayors.org/HHSurvey2007/hhsurvey07.pdf) reports that many cities are unable to meet local demand for emergency food assistance and that they expect the demand to increase in 2008.

"The hungry people left in the wake of rising food prices, unemployment, and poverty desperately need people like the hunger activists who participate in Church World Service CROP Hunger Walks. These are the people--from local churches, mosques and temples--who are helping us provide emergency food even as we look for lasting solutions to the underlying causes of hunger and poverty," says McCullough.

Church World Service is a global humanitarian agency working through an international network of secular and faith organizations to help struggling people lift themselves out of poverty with sustainable development programs, disaster relief, refugee assistance and social justice advocacy.