1,500 people hitting the streets tomorrow morning will be walking not to burn off last night’s dinner but to buy tomorrow’s.

Working to end hunger both at home and abroad, the Grand Rapids Area Center for Ecumenism (GRACE) will hold the 24th annual Hunger Walk on Saturday, May 5. All pledges collected by walkers are distributed through GRACE to twenty-three local community agencies and four international relief organizations.

With the help of 140 local congregations and groups, as well as support from individuals, GRACE hopes to raise $175,000 in pledges. “About fifty percent stays in local agencies,” said GRACE Program Director Lisa Mitchell. Of the $4.3 million raised in the last twenty-three years, over $1.2 million has gone to local hunger agencies.

The local agencies, which include Catholic Human Development Outreach, Degage Ministries and the Salvation Army, will use the funds for emergency food needs, shelter subsidies, economic development projects, seniors’ programming and education in nutrition, budgeting and parenting. The remainder of the funds will provide hunger relief and development support through international agencies like the Christian Reformed World Relief Committee.

The walk, a 12 kilometer (7.5 mile) loop, runs through Grand Rapids’ west side with checkpoints at St. James Catholic School, West Leonard CRC and Sts. Peter and Paul Catholic School. Beverages will be provided by Calvin College, whose affiliations with GRACE include past Hunger Walks and GRACE’s Racial Justice Summit recently held on Calvin’s campus.

The refreshments are Calvin’s gift to the walkers, said Darlene Meyering, director of College Relations for the Calvin, who will be serving at the walk tomorrow. “We believe that it’s a way for us to reach out to the community and thank them” for helping in the fight against hunger, she said.

GRACE’s goals “fit in very well with the message of the college to transform society to look more like the kingdom of God,” said Calvin Director of Community Relations Carol Reenstra, who considers the walk part of her personal “commitment to being more aware about poverty issues and justice for all people.”

In the beginning, the Hunger Walk was twelve miles long with one stop at the sixth mile serving only rice and water, reminding walkers how little many people have to eat. “A lot of people have to walk a long distance to receive clean water and food supplies in developing countries,” and the Hunger Walk helps people relate to their need, said Mitchell.

“That fact that there has to be a Hunger Walk is an education for our community,” said Marsha deHollander, who will participate in the walk and has set herself a personal pledge goal of $1,000. She is director of ACCESS, a Hunger Walk beneficiary that coordinates 100 food pantries and serves 3,000 households a month. The walk “calls our community to respond,” she said.

Although the event once drew nearly 3,500 walkers, attendance at last year’s walk was only slightly over 1,300. “Hunger doesn’t go away,” said Mitchell, who fears participation is waning without famines or disasters attracting media coverage to the fight against world hunger. “We want to create an awareness about hunger,” she said, “that it still exists, that local people who have a full-time job and are making minimum wage and trying to pay their expenses” may still need to rely on food pantries.

The walk will begin at 8:00 a.m. at Ah-Nab-Awen Park downtown. Information and pledge forms are available in the Service Learning Center or on GRACE’s website at www.grcmc.org/grace.