Dare to Care Food Bank and Interfaith Paths to Peace are organizing the community to fight hunger at the 37th annual Hunger Walk presented by Aramark on Sept. 14.
The walk will begin at 2:15 p.m. at The Belvedere, 485 W. Main St., and will include a 5K route for runners and walkers (3.1 miles) that follows a flat, out-and-back course along Louisville’s Museum Row and includes a quick tour of the new Portland revitalization area.
Area faith leaders, including Archbishop Joseph E. Kurtz, took part in a press conference Aug. 4 to announce the event.
Organizers expect the crowd to again exceed 2,500 people and it is hoped the event will raise at least $125,000, as it has in the past.
This year’s event will include the Hunger Walk Family Festival, held from noon to 4:30 p.m. on the day of the walk. It will include the “Stampede Against Hunger” obstacle course, a Kids’ Zone by KaZoing with inflatables and more, musical entertainment, free food and refreshments and some of the city’s “finer food trucks” according to a release from Dare to Care.
The Aramark company is the walk’s presenting sponsor for the fifth year in a row, and other major sponsors include Kroger, Yum! Brands, the Ford Motor Co. and Fifth Third Bank.
Terry Taylor, executive director of Interfaith Paths to Peace, said that those in the faith community “do not often come together to publicly address an issue, but we stand together now to call upon everyone in the Louisville area to face and overcome a foe that threatens the Greater Louisville area. That foe is the specter of hunger.”
In addition to Archbishop Kurtz, other faith leaders present at the press conference were Lyn Lawrence representing the Baha’i faith; Buddhists Geshe Tsewang Thinley of the Drepung Gomang (Tibetan) Institute and Monastery; Episcopalian Deacon Mary Abrams, head of the peace and justice division of the Episcopal Diocese of Kentucky; the Rev. Dr. Peggy Hinds of the Presbyterian Church; Dr. Sheeba Jolly of the Hindu Temple of Kentucky; Dr. Syed Khader of the River Road Mosque and Islamic Cultural Center; Fred Gross of the Community Relations Council of the Jewish Community of Louisville; The Rev. Elwood Sturtevant of Thomas Jefferson Unitarian Church; and Keith Runyon of the Center for Interfaith Relations.
The walk evolved from the faith community’s — and the public’s — response in 1969 to the starvation death of a nine-year-old boy on Thanksgiving eve. That movement led to the beginning of the Dare to Care Food Bank more than four decades ago and grew into the annual Hunger Walk, which began in 1978. The majority of proceeds from the walk go to Dare to Care to fight local hunger. A smaller portion goes to other relief efforts.
Participants can sign up as individuals or they can start or join a team. Registration is $25 for adults and $15 for youth 18 and under. With online registration, individuals can seek their own sponsors to increase their impact on the fight against hunger. Registration and more information are available at www.thehungerwalk.org.
