Shelli DeRobertis
Staff Writer
Claremont Memorial Park was packed on Sunday with more than 500 people who came to support the 31st annual Walk for the Hungry, promoted by Pomona Inland Valley Council of Churches. At noon they registered then began a warm up session to prepare themselves for either the 5k or 10k route. The sun was bright and the air crisp, hindering any excuses not to walk. Or for some University of La Verne students, not to run.
“I was going to walk initially but other brothers on my fraternity said they were going to run and win. So I ran,” Kapono Kobylanski said, catching his breath after running the 5K route. It was Kapono’s idea for his fraternity to be involved and help raise money for the walk.
“Everyone agreed to it,” Adrian Prado said, a sophomore fraternity member of Phi Delta Theta (Cal Rho Chapter). “We fundraised and each member brought in a certain amount of money.”
Kobylanski has been working part time in the finance department at the Pomona Inland Valley Council of Churches, and was also an intern last summer, which gave him the idea to involve ULV.
“I wanted it to be an all ULV organizations event like Greek Week, but we didn’t get a lot of feedback,” he said. “But Iota Delta Sorority is here today, and some Core 305 students are here, too.”
The PIVCOC includes 95 churches in the area that support emergency shelters and food security programs.
“Our mission is to feed the hungry and shelter the homeless,” volunteer Sarah Richardson said. “We have three hunger sites, one in Pomona and two in Ontario.”
Richardson and her husband are both full time volunteers. Ian Richardson is president of the board of directors for PIVCOC.
“We have a shelter here (in Pomona) that houses up to eight families or 28 people,” Richardson said. “We work with them to try and get them in job placement and permanent housing. We also have 17 units that are apartments for transitional housing.”
This past year there was a family who was able to purchase their first home after receiving assistance from the organization.
“We work with a lot of entities in the communities,” Richardson said.
Catholic charities, drug programs, hunger programs, Pomona Valley Hospital and House of Ruth are some of them.
The money brought in from the walk and pre-walk events is crucial to keeping the council’s services alive, especially now.
“We have had to let two thirds of the staff go due to financial difficulties,” Sarah Richardson said. She began volunteering full time to help compensate for the loss of staff, and is grateful that so many University students have volunteered their time to the organization.
Two instructors have sent students to work at local organizations as part of a class requirement.
“We got 29 students from La Verne and that was a high number,” she said. “A lot of them are working at hunger sites.”
The goal for this year’s walk is to raise $100,000 which will help pay for food, shelter sites and staff, said Jody Gmeiner, who worked the last three years for the council as an associate director.
She is no longer employed by the organization, but was working at Sunday’s event anyway.
“I believe in the mission of the council and that’s why I still volunteer,” Gmeiner said.
“Last year we raised forty two thousand dollars without a walk. It was raining ashes and money was still raised. People literally came into the office and handed in money during the fires,” she said.
So far the amount collected for this year’s walk is $33,600 but Ian Richardson expects the amount to be between $40,000 and $50,000 after the pledges are collected. He also said that during a pre-walk dinner $32,000 was raised, and another $7,000 by corporate sponsors in the community.
He credits Jim Smirl with remarkably selling 34 tables for the dinner at the cost of $1,250 per table of 10.
“He came to me and said, ‘I’ll help you,’” Ian Richardson said.
Fortunately it looks as if the goals will be reached.
“One dollar will buy us seven pounds of food,” he said. “We can make a dollar go a long way.”
Shelli DeRobertis can be reached at sderobertis@ulv.edu.
Shelli DeRobertis
