“We walk because they walk.” With this powerful reminder, faith communities across the country have organized and participated in CROP Walks in support of Church World Service’s efforts to provide disaster relief, hunger alleviation, and community building across the world. Join us after church Sunday, April 26, as we participate in our annual Church World Service CROP Walk. Click here to sign up or to donate as a friend of Parkview. Then invite family members and friends to sponsor you. We can make a difference in addressing world hunger! Twenty-five percent of the funds raised stay in the local community. Last year eleven walkers and 41 donors from Parkview raised $4,800, of which $1,200 went to South Sacramento Interfaith Partnership.
Church World Service (CWS) is an international ecumenical relief agency with “a vision of a world where all have food, voice, and a safe place to call home.” Its mission is “transforming communities around the globe through just and sustainable responses to hunger, poverty, displacement, and disaster.” CWS is comprised of 16 covenant member denominations, all of which are committed “to do in partnership what none of us could hope to do as well alone.” Founded in the wake of the devastation of WW II and working in solidarity with local ecumenical agencies, it now has a presence on every continent except Antarctica. Some areas Church World Service focuses on include:

• Disaster response, including distribution of food
  rations and assistance finding shelter and safe water
  and sanitation services following humanitarian
  emergencies and natural disasters.
• Assistance for refugees and asylum seekers,
  including return to country of origin, safe
  resettlement in the “country of first asylum,” or
  resettlement in a third country.
• Hunger relief through distribution of seeds,
  livestock; and farming implements, as well as
  education about improved farming techniques.

Submitted by Maurine Huang,
on behalf of PPW