Walk for Hunger Draws 3600 For Twenty-Mile Sunday Hike

About 3600 people yesterday traversed a 20-mile route through the Boston area to raise an estimated $182,000 in pledges in the ninth annual Walk for Hunger.

Larry Meyer, coordinator of the walk, said yesterday 63 per cent of the money raised goes to about 20 local feeding projects, including Shelter in Cambridge and Respond in Somerville, while 15 per cent is for overseas projects and 14 per cent is for hunger education and action projects. The remaining money covers administrative costs.

Meyer called the walk, which is coordinated by Project Bread, "a fund- and consciousness-raising event."

The Walk for Hunger was founded by the Paulist Center, a downtown chapel and educational center, but Meyer says, "We've reached out in the past few years and made it an ecumenical event."

This year's walk included participants from some 400 different churches and schools in greater Boston, he added.

Clusters of walkers trudged past Harvard along wind-swept Memorial Drive yesterday afternoon, three-fourths of the way through the trek, which began and ended at Boston Common.

Several individuals dressed as clowns were among the last to pass the campus, straggling by around 4 p.m.

One of these walkers, Joachim Lally, a priest at the Paulist Center, said he feels less tired in years when he walks as a clown because "the focus is outside myself."

Pat Dunn, coordinator for the Paulist Leadership and Renewal Project who also walked as a clown, said her costume was "a way of reaching people you ordinarily can't reach," including isolated elderly people who sit and watch walkers on Commonwealth Avenue.

Dunn said there is "a real sense of involvement and community" in the walk, adding, "If it weren't for this, there would be people in this city who wouldn't be fed each day."