Elgin CROP Walk set for Oct. 27

Honorary Chair Danise Habun will lead the 39th Elgin CROP Walk on Sunday, Oct. 27. Participants may either walk a two-mile course or bicycle a five-mile course, raising money from pledges and gifts for the completion of the event.

Registration begins at 1:30 p.m. behind the Elgin City Hall, with the walk beginning at 2 p.m.

CROP Walks were the first fundraising walks designed to raise money for particular causes, staring in the 1940s as a response to the suffering caused by World War II. Today CROP Walks support “faith based work transforming communities around the globe through just and sustainable responses to hunger, poverty, displacement and disaster.”

When first founded, CROP was an offshoot of the National Council of Churches, although the two have bee independent since 2000. In Elgin close to 200 people from nearly 20 churches and community groups will participate, raising money for disaster relief in the U.S. and around the world and disaster prevention through economic development projects and assistance to displaced people. Last year’s CROP Walk was the 65th largest CROP Walk in the nation, a record that organizers hope to beat this year.

Twenty-five percent of the money raised is returned to Elgin Cooperative Ministries in order to help fund local food pantries and soup kettles.

“Hunger is both a global and a local issue, and our efforts to create a just world needs to recognize the linkages between global issues like climate change and hunger in our own communities,” said Bob Langlois, chair of this year’s walk.

Danise Habun is being honored for her longtime service as a volunteer, nonprofit executive and board member who had worked diligently to create a community in Elgin that respects the rights and needs of people who have been marginalized by their financial poverty. She has been a key voice working behind the scenes to make Elgin a strong community for all its citizens, and so was recognized as the honorary chairperson of the walk by the Elgin City Council at its Oct. 9 meeting.

Sign up via crophungerwalk.org.