CROP walk summary

[johnridley]

We came, we walked. T and C(the dog) and I did the full 5 mile walk around Chelsea, and we raised $265. Not too bad for a first year and a late start. Most of that was gathered online either here or at work. All of us had nice encounters with others of our various ages and species, and I had a good 20 minute talk at the end with someone who is a closet science fiction fan, and had a fairly cool tiny dog.

She knew a lot of Ray Bradbury, which I'm somewhat lacking in, but I held my own on Heinlein and Clarke, and in the end after the conversation led to The Forever War, I pointed her to Old Man's War, and I mentioned that I'm currently reading the Heris Serrano and Honor Harrington series, if she likes space opera. I did warn her about Weber's tendency to sound like a military historian for a page or two at a time. She did dive into her car and get a pencil and paper to write the titles and authors down, so I hope she likes them.

Comments

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

I hate sounds like one of those cranky old ladies, but does anyone remember back in the day we did stuff like "The Walk For Mankind" and we walked THIRTY MILES?

This was in the suburbs of Chicago, in the early 70s.

K.

[johnridley.livejournal.com]

This is more of a visibility thing. They want a whole lot of people walking all around town so people notice. The point of the walk is to raise awareness of the fact that hundreds of millions of people in the world walk miles daily just to get a few gallons of possibly potable water or some basic staple food, and to get people to think about what a waste of human life it is for them to be spending all their time simply subsisting rather than doing something creative or productive.

What they really want is to have hundreds of people walking around being very visible.

They try to first provide easy access to safe water (sinking wells or installing filters), then they provide some perpetual food source like a chicken house and 100 chicks to provide eggs and meat, then they provide small loans so that the women who now have time to do something productive instead of spending 12 hours a day carrying water can start small businesses

This isn't a pay-per-mile event, it's a simple pledge to CROP and then a visibility event.

The previous weekend was a breast cancer walk which was pledge-per-mile, and one of the women in the church went and walked 60 miles and raised > $6000, so there are still significant walks out there.