WHATELY — The annual CROP Hunger Walk will come to Whately on Sunday, Oct. 4, with a route featuring a few town staples.
Participants will set off at 1 p.m. from the Whately Congregational Church on either a 1-mile or 4-mile loop, with stops along the way at the S. White Dickinson Memorial Library and the Quonquont Milk Bottle.
“I always tell people it doesn’t matter how far we walk,” said Steve Damon, longtime coordinator of the CROP Hunger Walk. “What’s important is why we are walking.”
The walk will be one of many across the country sponsored by the Church World Service to raise money for organizations fighting food insecurity. Last year, the walk in Northfield raised $25,000. According to Damon, 75% of the money that the Franklin County walk raises benefits organizations around the United States, while 25% boosts groups that are working on the ground in western Massachusetts, including the Franklin Area Survival Center, Franklin County Community Meals Program, Food Bank of Western Massachusetts, Trinity Church’s community meals and the Hilltown Churches Food Pantry.
This year, Damon said, “I don’t know what the goal is, but as long as somebody is still hungry, we haven’t reached it.”
Approximately 125 walkers set off last year to raise money for the cause. Damon hopes for a similar turnout this year with 23 churches involved. He believes the event draws a large crew of walkers because “people know they’re doing good.”
“God tells you to help one another,” Damon said, “and this is one way, and it’s a pretty easy way.”
Damon, a Gill resident, first participated in a CROP Hunger Walk in 1992. About four years later, former coordinator David Neil teased him, “You realize you’re going to be doing this someday.” At the time, Damon brushed it off, thinking, “Probably not, but thank you for the warning,” he recalled, chuckling. Sure enough, Damon became the event’s coordinator in 2013 and has no plans of stopping.
At a community meal at the Second Congregational Church in Greenfield in 2017, Damon spotted someone who had participated in the walk eating the free dinner. The moment gave him goosebumps.
“That is perfectly full circle,” he said. “It’s not, we are feeding them — we are feeding us.”
Walkers can sign up on the spot on Sunday or ahead of time through the event website’s at tinyurl.com/44kensd8.
