By Sophia Wiener
LITTLE SILVER – On Sunday, Oct. 20, the 44th annual Red Bank CROP Hunger Walk will take place at Red Bank Regional High School (RBR). There will be face painting and temporary tattoos, food and an art competition. Vendors will sell their wares for charity on RBR’s fields. The Girl Scouts will run a rock painting arts-and-crafts, inspired by a similar activity at Red Bank’s recent Porchfest. There will be live music. Halloween costumes will abound.
“It’s like a party,” said Janie Schildge, the event’s coordinator. “Little kids dance.”
The festival’s crown is the massive tent where donated food is collected and prepared for transport by high school students from Red Bank, Colts Neck and other areas.
“It’s cool to watch the van fill up with supplies,” said Lucy Tuttle, a teen leader from Middletown North High School.
But the main event, of course, is the walk. Runners race ahead, while more casual participants walk together with friends and family and fellow church members. Parents pushing strollers is a common sight. Kicking off at 2 p.m., the group will wind for 5 miles through Little Silver and Red Bank’s eastern neighborhoods before returning to RBR for refreshments and to view the art competition’s results.
This local CROP Hunger Walk is a link in a chain of support that sprawls ever wider. Every year, over a thousand walks take place across America. Out of all of these, Red Bank’s is one of the largest. Last year, it raised $115,000 – it has raised over $100,000 every year since 2000 – and brought in 14,000 pounds of food for local pantries. Some 25% of the money raised is split between 14 local partners. The rest is sent to the movement’s sponsor, Church World Service (CWS), a humanitarian aid nonprofit that partners with local organizations to aid communities domestically and internationally. CWS sent thousands of cleanup kits to victims of Hurricane Helene in the immediate aftermath of the flood, and it assists refugees and immigrants around the world with finding housing and securing basic needs and rights.
This balance between a global and a local viewpoint is reflected in the walk itself. Whether or not participants know it, the route is 5 miles because, as Schildge explained, “That is the average distance people around the world walk to get water.” It echoes the hope that by walking the same path, the community might grow a little closer to its neighbors.
One of those neighbors is Lunch Break in Red Bank. One of the walk’s largest beneficiaries, its food assistance has slowly spread into more holistic support as it helps those in need with everything from learning life or career skills to finding educational supplies for students.
Monmouth Day Care Center (MDCC), another Red Bank nonprofit, provides crucial childcare services for all families, subsidizing the cost for those who need help. It also runs a food pantry. The walk’s donation goes toward daycare costs and purchasing paper towels, detergent, coffee and other necessities people rarely think to donate.
“Those items fly off the shelf, and the walk’s food donations fill our pantry right up. It’s like Thanksgiving,” said Christina Caccamo, MDCC development coordinator, highlighting the pantry’s benefits. “The kids, when they go home for the day, sometimes take the initiative and say, ‘Mom, I want to grab this from the shelf.’ It’s a very sweet way to get the whole family involved, and it takes the stress out of getting groceries,” Caccamo said.
Red Bank’s CROP Hunger Walk has grown through word of mouth, local advertising and friends bringing friends in. These ties bring in new volunteers, too. Newer members include Theresa Tuttle, Lucy’s mother, who joined alongside her other daughter, Amelia, after Amelia’s youth group was invited. “I was there to teach her about community service, but it was surprisingly fun. We came back because of the camaraderie,” Theresa said. “There were so many young people and people from different schools, different churches, a temple, all over the county. It’s easy to get siloed in a small community, so to suddenly be part of this bigger group on a beautiful day in the fall is special.”
“Janie (Schildge) is a really nice person, so I do it for her, too,” Lucy added.
Today, Theresa runs the Red Bank walk’s social media, spearheading Facebook campaigns to reach people across the county. Instagram, with its millions of teenagers, is next on their list.
These teenagers provide a vital, ever-flowing source of enthusiasm and new ideas. Along with helping with social media, they’re the source of the walk embracing the fall spirit – this is the first year that event-appropriate Halloween costumes are allowed, and even encouraged, for attendees.
More than a few of them continue the CROP Walk’s legacy after leaving the area, driven by a sense of accomplishment and pride the walk helped teach them. “They’ll write you and say ‘Hey, we just walked in Ohio.’ Or they’ll be doing their own projects, wherever they are,” Schildge said.
The article originally appeared in the October 10 – October 16, 2024 print edition of The Two River Times.
