Farewell, Walk and Knock

For more than 3 decades, holiday season food drive helped feed needy and was a beacon of community generosity

Walk and Knock, the holiday season food drive that collected an estimated 4 million pounds of groceries for the needy during the last 35 years, has been permanently retired.

The project’s steering committee last month unanimously voted to terminate the door-to-door food collection program in the Kelso/Longview area. Smaller communities —  Castle Rock, Kalama, Cathlamet — will continue running their independent Walk-and-Knock efforts. 

Donations in the Longview and Kelso areas for decades exceeded 80,000 pounds and once peaked at 123,000 pounds. However, they started declining after 2011 — when donations hit 96,000 pounds — and especially nosedived during 2020 and 2021, the early years of the pandemic. Last year the take rebounded, but only to 19,000 pounds.

Walk and Knock began here in 1988 and was the first community-wide food drive in the local area. It set an example that helped inspire other efforts on behalf of the needy. And it brought hundreds of volunteers together in a common effort to collect bags of foodstuffs citizens were asked to place on their porches on the first Saturday of December. Donations were distributed to local food banks.

But it has just run out of steam, organizers say.

“We don’t believe we’ll ever be able to attain the food collection numbers of 2011 and earlier years. We also don't believe this is the best return for the volunteer commitment that's invested in this community-wide event,” according to the committee’s announcement.

“It takes hundreds of volunteers to canvas Longview and Kelso for this door-to-door drive, and we're finding that it's getting more difficult each year to get enough volunteers from our service clubs, scouting organizations, schools, churches, youth sports teams and other community organizations to cover this large area in one day,” according to the statement.

The group noted that many other efforts to help the needy have sprung up in recent years, including the “Civil War” food drive organized by students at R.A. Long and Mark Morris high schools and the postal workers’ food drive.

“Retiring Walk and Knock is by no means a reflection on the tireless and passionate volunteers of this community. There are simply more available options for people to donate today. Thirty-five years ago, Walk and Knock was the only community-wide food drive in town. Today, there are food drives going on almost every month,” the statement said.

A decline in volunteerism for this drive may reflect the aging of the community. Erosion of awareness of Walk and Knock no doubt also reflects the declining circulation and community presence of The Daily News, which used to distribute Walk and Knock donation bags in the newspaper the week of the collection and  reported regularly about the program.

I suspect, too, that a hardening of attitudes toward the poor and unfortunate — so plainly evident in the debates about the homelessness and Hope Village — may also be at play. 

One of the best ways to judge a community is by how compassionately it assists its struggling citizens. I think that this community still is a generous place — as the Walk and Knock organizers themselves suggest as the program sails into the sunset.

“We believe Walk and Knock …  has inspired the entire community to give in many other different ways beyond what we could have ever imagined. We're hoping the inspiration we started will live on and we will continue to work together to find ways to provide food to those in need and to make our community a better place.”