By Mike Kinney
Community members gathered for an annual tradition at Nicholl Park in Richmond Saturday that calls for an end to homelessness and hunger in Contra Costa County.
The 33rd Annual GRIP Harmony Walk featured a walk and family friendly fun at the park, all for the good cause of raising funds for local community members in need.
The event, presented by GRIP, Chevron, the City of Richmond and Kaiser Permanente, started three decades ago with a small group representing multiple local faith organizations coming together to walk Richmond’s streets. Their aim was to proclaim a common goal of ending hunger and homelessness in the community, and to form community partnerships to do something about it.
They were some of the early members of the Greater Richmond Interfaith Program (GRIP), the Richmond-based coalition of congregations that has evolved from a small community food pantry to a multiservice agency serving 15,000 homeless, hungry, and low-income clients annually.
The Harmony Walk has become a tradition and a reminder of the shared community goal.
“This event is to highlight the need for us to put focus on how we can resolve this whole issue of homelessness and so we are not in a position of where it currently is,” said Kathleen Sullivan, executive director of GRIP. “We are feeding 300 people a day at GRIP, this is an issue that is resolvable. And we are here to highlight in this walk, this march and dialogue that this is possible to do.”
Check out views from the event:
