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DKG Practice/Program

Keeping the Dream Alive – A Chapter

Project

by Gloria Jones

A CROP Hunger Walk is a community-wide fundraising event to end hunger
locally and around the world. These walks are sponsored by Church World Service
(CWS), an organization focused on “just and sustainable responses to hunger,
poverty, displacement, and disaster” (cwsglobal.org), and are coordinated by
groups, businesses, or schools that organize to raise funds. CROP Walk’s brochure
for Charlotte, North Carolina (charlottecropwalk.org/), reports that, in 2020, nearly
108,000 walkers took part in more than 800 CROP Hunger Walks across the United
States to raise $8.2 million to fight hunger and poverty locally and globally. This
is a story about one unique individual’s fight to end hunger and how it inspired a
DKG chapter to action.
In 1999, 22 years ago, Sam Ryburn
raised more money for the CROP
Hunger Walk than anyone in the world.
He had a dream to help those who were
hungry and in need. However, he was
in his 80s and had had a stroke. His
energy was diminished—but not his
determination.
My Grade 4 class of gifted students
read an article about Sam in the
newspaper. One student suggested they
write to thank him for what he had done
to help feed the world’s hungry—and
they did just that. I delivered the notes to
the local CROP Walk office in Charlotte,
and they were then passed along to Sam.
He was so overcome by the children’s
caring that he had these notes taped
to his fireplace mantel so he could
frequently set eyes on them.
Members from Kappa
Chapter who The students continued to write to Sam and decided that they would walk in
participated in the his place in the next community CROP Walk. For years, on a Sunday in October,
recent CROP Walk Charlotte has hosted the largest fundraising CROP Walk in the United States.
form a collage of Walkers collect donations for their participation in the CROP Walk, which has
caring. been anywhere from 4 to 10 miles. The students invited students from several other
schools to walk with them, and they raised around $4,000 in Sam’s name. The
biggest surprise was that Sam’s doctor and nurse brought him to the CROP Walk in
a wheelchair and pushed him the entire way with the children. They were elated, as
was he.

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