Dear Friend,

On Sunday, September 22, we will be joining with hundreds of participants in the annual Greater Lafayette Hunger Hike at Riehle Plaza in downtown Lafayette, and we need your help to make our efforts matter!

Here in Central Indiana, surrounded by the most productive farmland on the planet, in the wealthiest nation on earth, food insecurity remains a baffling reality for far too many of our neighbors. A full 70% of the students enrolled in Lafayette School Corporation participate in the federal free and reduced school lunch program.

They are children whose parents constantly worry about whether food at home will run out before they get enough money to buy more. They live in households where there isn’t always enough to afford well-balanced, nutritional meals.

Altogether, about 14 percent of U.S. households – roughly 48 million people or one in seven Americans – go hungry at some point during the year. This number actually underestimates the problem because the survey excludes the homeless and transients, groups that almost by definition lack enough food.

Yet despite the widespread and complex nature of the problem, the solution to food insecurity in our community is surprisingly basic: we must respond by providing food to children and adults who don’t have enough to eat.

One of the most important ways to do this is through your continued support of Hunger Hike.

Hunger Hike is a 3K fundraising walk along the beautiful Wabash Heritage Trail in Lafayette. It takes place on Sunday, September 22. Our goal this year is to raise $100,000 for the hunger relief efforts of Lafayette Urban Ministry, Food Finders Food Bank, Inc. and Haiti Ministry at St. Thomas Aquinas Center. I hope you will come out and hike with us this year. You can find out how by visiting hungerhike.org. I also hope that you will make a generous gift to Hunger Hike, right now, prior to the event.

Your gift of $50, $100, $250, $500, $1,000 or more, will allow our three, hunger-fighting partners to better fulfill their missions of feeding hungry children and strengthening families who are experiencing food insecurity.

• At Lafayette Urban Ministry, your gift will allow the new LUM Protein Food Pantry to provide healthful meat, fruit, vegetable and dairy products to 2,100 families who will come for help during the next year. It will cover the cost of infant formula and baby food. It will help to provide the paper products that SNAP assistance won’t. It will also help to pay for 20,000 meals to the homeless and 35,000 nutritious snacks to low-income children that LUM provides each day.
• At Food Finders Food Bank, Inc., your gift will allow for the expansion of the classes and programs offered in their Mobile Food Pantry and Food Resource & Education Center – an important initiative to educate clients in self-sufficiency as a means to reduce their food insecurity.
• At St. Thomas Aquinas, your gift will reach beyond our community to allow the Haiti Ministry to expand the nursing outreach program, assist in establishing a community store, and further develop the hybrid seed & food storage programs to increase crop yields.

Hunger Hike is our community’s oldest and most well-respected fundraising walk, dating back to the early 1970’s. Last year more than 1,000 people participated in the event. Over the years, more than $2 million dollars has been raised, providing a critical social safety net to thousands of hungry children and adults. Your past support of Hunger Hike has allowed us to wage an aggressive fight against hunger in both our own community, the region and in Haiti.

We hope you will join us again this year by walking a little farther – and digging a little deeper. Please, won’t you make a generous gift to Hunger Hike today?
Make your check payable to “Hunger Hike” and place it in the enclosed envelope – or give online at hungerhike.org/donate.

Gratefully,

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