Julia Alvarez serves as honorary chair of CROP Hunger Walk
Renowned author helps launch first-ever ‘solidarity walk’ in Dominican Republic

Renowned author and honorary chair of the Middlebury (VT) CROP Hunger Walk Julia Alvarez (center) and CWS New England Regional Director Bert Marshall are joined by Middlebury CROP Hunger Walk committee members (l-r) Ellen McKay, Laurie Jordan and Patty Hallam. Photo: Lindsay Jordan

MIDDLEBURY, Vt. Legendary author and Middlebury College writer-in-residence Julia Alvarez will lead dozens of Middlebury College students and others who care about fighting hunger as honorary chair of the Addison County CROP Hunger Walk, on Oct. 4.

“We are walking, to raise money for people in need around the world and in our own communities,” Alvarez said. “But CROP walk is more than a fundraiser.”  Alvarez is author of the highly acclaimed novels In the Time of the Butterflies, How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents, and Saving the World. 

Now in their 40th year, Church World Service’s CROP Hunger Walks raise some $16 million in more than 2,000 communities across the U.S. Money raised from the events help to fund hunger-fighting programs in each CROP Hunger Walk community and through Church World Service around the globe.

“To say that we’re thrilled to have Julia take part might be an understatement,” CWS New England Regional Director, the Rev. Bert Marshall said. “She understands fighting hunger takes much more than money, it takes a demonstration of action, which is what the walk is all about.”

In addition to leading walkers in Middlebury, Alvarez has worked to create the first-ever walk held in solidarity with residents in her native Dominican Republic. Organized by her Alta Gracia sustainable farm and literacy project in Los Marranitos, Dominican Republic, residents will walk at the same time and date as the October 4 Middlebury event.

Two Middlebury College graduates who are volunteering at the farm in Los Marranitos, Ria Shroff and Eli Berman, are organizing the solidarity Walk.  "The walk in Los Marranitos is meant to show how people around the world can unite and act on the ever-present scourge of hunger,” Marshall said.

“Throughout the United States people are walking in solidarity with women and children and men around the world who walk every day in their struggle for existence,” Alvarez said. “Children and men and women, carrying firewood, babies, crops, looking for food, shelter, looking for help when disaster strikes or someone in their family gets ill.”

This September, as the United States observes Hunger Action Month, CWS is asking people throughout the nation to become CROP Hunger Walkers, to support a CROP Hunger Walker in their communities or to donate online at http://www.cropwalkonline.org/. 

Call your CWS/CROP Regional Office, toll-free at 888-297-2767 or visit http://www.cropwalk.org/ to find the CROP Hunger Walk nearest you or to learn how to organize one.