Dare to Care Food Bank and Interfaith Paths to Peace are again organizing a united community to fight hunger at the 35th annual Hunger Walk presented by Aramark on Sunday, September 9. The Hunger Walk will begin at 2:15 p.m. at Waterfront Park’s Festival Plaza.
The 5K (3.1 miles) route for walkers and runners follows a flat, out-and-back course along Louisville’s riverfront. This year’s route will be enhanced by live music and spirit teams.
There will also be a Hunger Walk Festival from 12:30-4:30 p.m. that day at Festival Plaza. The Festival will include entertainment, a Kids Zone by Kazoing with inflatables, the Bubble Bus, and more, as well as free food and refreshments, and the presence of some of Louisville’s finer food trucks.
Aramark returns for the third straight year as the Hunger Walk’s presenting sponsor. Major sponsors include Kroger, Yum! Brands, and Fifth Third Bank. David Lauria of Aramark said, “We are proud to again sponsor this special event that creates a unique unity for our community and is critical to ensure everyone can get the food they need to be healthy.”
The Jewish Community of Louisville is a co-sponsor of the 2012 Hunger Walk. The JCL will also be organizing a team of walkers. As Community went to press, the official Hunger Walk web site, www.thehungerwalk.org, was not yet complete.
When it is operational, community members are invited register for the walk and join the Jewish Louisville team.
Kentuckiana’s rise in hunger has caught the attention of local faith leaders. Local leaders of several faiths, including Roman Catholic Archbishop Joseph Kurtz and Jewish Community of Louisville’s Jewish Community Relations Council Director Matt Goldberg, are uniting to call on their congregations and the entire community to support this year’s Hunger Walk.
These faith leaders will gather at a press conference on Tuesday, August 14, to make a public request for support. Terry Taylor, Interfaith Paths to Peace executive director, said, “We 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.”
Dare to Care Food Bank and Interfaith Paths to Peace organize The Hunger Walk, which was Louisville’s first public issue walk. The Walk evolved from the faith community’s public unity after the 1969 death from hunger of a nine-year-old boy in Louisville on Thanksgiving Eve. That movement led to the beginning of Dare to Care more than 40 years ago and grew into a movement that formed The Hunger Walk in 1978.
More than 2,000 people attended the 2011 Hunger Walk, raising more than $100,000 to fight hunger. The majority of the proceeds go to Dare to Care to fight local hunger and a smaller portion goes to The World Food Program for international hunger relief.
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 also seek their own sponsors to increase their impact on the fight against hunger.
Registration and more information is available at www.thehungerwalk.org.
Dare to Care Food Bank is a local nonprofit agency with a mission to lead the community to feed the hungry and conquer the cycle of need. In the past 12 months, Dare to Care distributed more than 12 million meals to nearly 200,000 different people in eight Kentucky and five Indiana counties. Dare to Care also operates 14 Kids Cafes in neighborhood afterschool locations and Backpack Buddy weekend nutrition programs in 36 Kentuckiana elementary schools.
For more information, visit www.daretocare.org.