Red Bank CROP Hunger Walk Returns For 41st Year

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By Elizabeth Wulfhorst

COURTESY LINDA ENSOR
Face coverings are also part of the merchandise available at the Oct. 17 walk.

LITTLE SILVER – After last year’s virtual event to raise funds and donations for those suffering from food insecurity, the 2021 Red Bank CROP Hunger Walk will happen at its usual venue, albeit not for its usual length.

Last October during the height of COVID-19 outbreaks, before vaccines were readily available, organizers of the walk made the decision to hold the yearly fundraiser virtually, asking people to walk on their own and donate online. The 2020 walk was one of the most successful ever held, raising nearly $140,000 and delivering 10,000 pounds of food to those desperately in need because of the ongoing pandemic.“Last year… we all did it on our own and actually it was an amazing year. It’s the second highest amount we’ve ever raised in all of our history, because people really came through, realizing hunger really did matter when you didn’t have a job,” said Jane Schildge, Red Bank CROP Hunger Walk coordinator since 1985, who noted the walk has been raising at least $100,000 every year since 2000.

Each year 25 percent of the proceeds from the event go to 15 local partner programs from Matawan to Asbury Park, like Lunch Break, Monmouth Day Care Center, HAB core and Backpack Crew. The remainder of the money goes to Church World Service (CWS) to support programs that fight hunger and poverty, displacement and disaster relief around the world. “Women have become a weapon of war,” Schildge said, “and the things that happen to people in villages is really tough, and even if they’re in a refugee camp. But that’s the global side of Church World Service and it’s harder to sell at a time when Americans are hurting,” she noted. “The unique part of our walk is that we can make a decision about where we want the local money to go.”

In 1947, CWS, an organization of Christian clergy and farmers in the United States, established CROP (Christian Rural Overseas Program) as a way to send seed, grain and livestock to watorn Europe to help residents recover and rebuild. The first CROP Walk was held in Bismarck, North Dakota, Oct. 17, 1968. It raised $25,000. In 1979, Rev. David Muyskens, a Shrewsbury Presbyterian pastor, organized the first CROP event in the Red Bank area – a beach cleanup that raised over $3,000. The first official Red Bank CROP Hunger Walk was held two years later.Still a little anxious about bringing together hundreds of people during a continuing pandemic, this year the Red Bank walk officials tasked participants with walking 4.1 miles on their own, inviting them to Red Bank Regional High School from 1 to 3 p.m. Oct. 17 for a 1-mile “victory lap” around the school and donation drop-off. Officials hope to raise $141,000 and collect 18,000 pounds of food, all to honor the walk’s 41st year.

Students from Christian Brothers Academy, a partner in the CROP Walk since 1984, will once again be sorting and bagging the food donations for delivery to food pantries. Haley Nelson has been serving as a teen leader for Red Bank’s CROP Hunger Walk for the past four years. The Trinity Hall senior and member of the school’s SCOPE (Service, Community Outreach, and Prayer Are Essential) Council, also organizes the food drive at the school.

“The drive allows students to become more informed of the needs of the local community, enabling them to directly contribute to the fight against hunger through donating items such as beans, soup, rice and peanut butter,” Haley said, mentioning the four items Schildge said are “good staples” for food banks to have.
Haley said she volunteers for CROP Walk because “it brings me genuine joy and provides me with the outlet to participate in a cause that is of great importance to me.” “I am a firm believer that we all have the ability to yield change if we have the power to pursue it,” she said.Linda Ensor is an International Baccalaureate teacher at Shore Regional High School who has been volunteering with the Red Bank CROP Walk since 1992.

This year she is advising the teen leaders. To maximize profits for the walk, she and the students worked over the summer with an electronic cutting machine and app to develop logged products – aprons, wine bags, cinch bags, totes, caps, hats, face masks and mugs – which will be on sale at the event. Also available during the event will be information on how individuals can make school kits, health kits, birthing kits and cleanup kits which CWS distributes to people based on need throughout the world, and a table for the Empty Bowls project which provides funds for hunger relief programs by selling handmade artisan bowls. “In a nation as wealthy as ours, no one should go hungry,” Ensor said. “Yet, food insecurity is a local, regional, national and global issue.”

The article originally appeared in the October 7 – 13, 2021 print edition of The Two River Times.