1947 marked the birth of a program called the Christian Rurall Overseas Program, created by the Church World Service. In its infancy the primary goal was to aid Midwest farm families in sharing their grain with hungry post-World War II European and Asian neighbors. Today CROP stands for Communities Responding to Overcome Poverty and has grown to include both the urban and rural population of the United States. It is an interfaith hunger education and fundraising program. The program is still sponsored by the Church World Service and organized into 21 regional offices across the country. The first CROP Walk was held on October 17th, 1969 in Bismarck, ND. During this Walk over a thousand people participated and raised over $25,000 to help combat world hunger. Shortly after several other CROP Walks occured and before long there were hundreds of CROP Walks in communities all across the nation. Currently there are over 2,000 CROP Walks held in communities across the U.S. In the last two decades over five million CROP Walkers have participated in more than 36,000 CROP Walks.
Each year communities participating in the CROP Walk get to donate exactly a fourth of their total CROP Walk earnings to local hunger charities not only allowing them to fight chronic hunger around the world but in their communities as well.
The first Clemson Community Crop Walk was hosted by the Clemson Campus Minsters Association and was primarily targeted towards college students
from local churches and campus ministries. Since then the Crop Walk has flourished. In 2007 the Clemson Community Crop Walk became a community wide event
with community members of all faiths from many different walks of life participating. How much has Clemson Community Crop Walk contributed to the global hunger epidemic
in the past? Here are some statistics reflecting the giving history.
