Published: May 18, 2006 10:11 am            

Residents set to walk for a good cause again Sunday

HUNGER: Organization holds six-mile walk for food pantries.

Susan Gregg will be taking a long walk along the Niagara River on Sunday, but she’ll have plenty of company. She’ll be accompanied by familiar faces who take the walk with her every year.

Gregg will be participating in an annual charity event for the Christian Rural Overseas Project known as the CROP Walk. Her husband, Robert, has been organizing the event locally for more than 25 years.

“My oldest daughter is 29 and I can remember pushing her in the umbrella stroller,” Gregg said.

The charity raises money for food pantries locally and fights hunger on an international scale as well.

“It’s very important,” Gregg said. “It means a lot to the community. A lot of people depend on food pantries.”

The program represents an alliance of churches from the Town of Tonawanda, Kenmore, Amherst and the cities of Tonawanda and North Tonawanda that actively seek support for area food pantries and battle hunger overseas. Out of the money raised, which totaled more than $9,000 last year, 25 percent goes to local organizations.

Howard Boswell is pastor of Kenmore Presbyterian Church and has been walking with Gregg for a very long time.

“I’ve been walking in CROP Walks probably for 25 years,” he said. “Hunger is an incredibly critical issue throughout the world. Literally, people are starving everywhere in the world. We have the ability to feed everyone if we could just use the funds that we have.”

CROP Walkers have spent the past weeks raising money for the fund and will take a 6.2-mile trip down the Niagara River from the City of Tonawanda’s Miller Band Shell in Niawanda Park to the South Grand Island Bridge.

Part of the event’s success comes from its low administrative costs, which makes sure that more money goes to fighting starvation instead of paying off the costs of the event.

“For every dollar that’s raised, 80 to 90 percent goes directly to that relief,” Boswell said, “which is far better than other organizations.”

For more information on CROP or the event, contact Robert Gregg at 481-1786.

Contact Jeff Shaw at 693-1000, Ext. 157.



If you go

• WHAT: The annual CROP Walk for local and international food pantries

• WHEN: 1 p.m. Sunday

• WHERE: The Miller Band Shell, Niawanda Park, City of Tonawanda

        

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