William's campaign for Walk the Mile, Inc.

On Aug. 26, 2017, after handing out 39 brown bag meals to homeless people in downtown Cincinnati, we spotted a guy in his mid-20s at Fountain Square digging through a trash can. He didn’t find any food, so he hustled over to the next can. Nothing again. With one meal still in our possession, we ran to cut him off before he could start digging into another one.

“We are handing out meals tonight and have one left,” I said. “Would you like it?”

His eyes lit up. “Oh my God, are you kidding?” he said. “I’m starving!”

Since then, we have fed the homeless dozens of times with brown bag meals we make in our Northern Kentucky home, about 15 minutes south of Cincinnati. We also provide them with new clothing, blankets, sleeping bags, and other basic necessities. It is a grassroots effort we started doing with our children and their cousins in 2013 in Cleveland, Ohio, but we stopped doing it after a couple of years because of busy lives and a lack of funds. Now a little older and wiser, we realize that this work is life and needs to be done regularly.

In the summer of 2018, we officially became a 501(c)(3) charity called Walk the Mile, a name taken from the hymn The Servant Song. We try to do this once a month, more often when we can, and wherever we may be. We do it most often in Cincinnati or Covington, Kentucky, since that is our home base, but we have also done it in places like Cleveland, Chicago, and Syracuse. In addition, part of our mission is to bring people with us each time to help. Our hope is that our work will inspire them and their friends to do this or some other type of service work.

Every penny you donate (aside from gofundme's nominal fee for nonprofits) goes toward food, supplies (i.e., lunch bags, sandwich bags, utensils), or clothing that will end up directly in the hands of the homeless. Not a penny goes into our pockets or for any other expenses. Many charities have certain administrative costs. We have none. 

We set a goal of raising $25,000. That is an arbitrary number. Whatever is raised will be appreciated beyond measure.

We will continually post photos and updates here of our work. Thank you for reading and for making this charity possible! 

--The Croyle Family