The 38th annual Communities Responding to Overcome Poverty (CROP) Walk is being held in New Paltz at the end of October, designed to raise money for impoverished families in need locally and throughout the world.
The New Paltz CROP Walk began in 1973 and has had various names, said Klaus Jonietz, one of the coordinators for the event.
“CROP walk is the name we go by now,” he said.
The 10 mile walk will take place on Oct. 23, starting at the SUNY No. 18 parking lot on the corner of Plattekill Avenue and South Manheim Boulevard. Registration takes place at 1 p.m. and the walk will begin at 2 p.m., according to their website npcrop.org.
“This is a yearly event and has been around much longer than I have,” said Kathy Cartagena, program director for the Family of New Paltz.
She said the Family of New Paltz splits 25 percent of the proceeds received from the CROP walk with the Wallkill Food Pantry. Each use the profits to buy food for their pantries.
The other 75 percent of the money raised is given to Church World Service.
Jonietz said Church World Service is an organization that was created to help give food to impoverished and starving people around the world. Church World Service mandates that at least 25 percent of proceeds go to community programs.
“Most of the money goes to various needs around the Country -–they gave support to victims of hurricane Irene in Vermont most recently and helped people in New Orleans but they are also a Global type of organization,” said Jonietz. “Church World Service has a high giving rate, only 17 cents of every dollar is used for administrative purposes.”
According to Jonietz, the walk last year yielded more than $20,000 and had 132 participants. He hopes that this year there will be an increase in people donating and attending the event.
“We want people to come out,” said Jonietz. “Hopefully students will participate, I know the New Paltz Christian center has representation, but we encourage everyone to come out and help.”
To spread information about this year’s CROP Walk, the group created a Facebook page. According to Jonietz, they started the page this year in order to inform the public about the event and that they get new people donating and participating online each year.
“[Facebook] hopefully will help spread awareness and you can donate online through the page now because it links to our website,” he said.
According to Cartagena, those looking to sign up can pick up sponsor sheets at the Family of New Paltz or at any local churches. For information on the walk, you can go to www.npcrop.org or www.worldchurchservice.org.