The Long Walk Home could find ECHO its new home

Creig P. Sherburne/Atascadero News • Terri Sherwin, Michael Byrne, Charlotte Byrne, Sheri Moen and Tillman Moen, all ECHO volunteers, show off posters advertising the Long Walk Home, a fundraiser for ECHO slated for Saturday, Aug. 25 and which will pass right through the spot the volunteers are standing in at the Sunken Gardens.

ATASCADERO — That the El Camino Homeless Organization is looking for a new home is no secret. But some relative newcomers to the organization have come up with a new way folks can get involved and raise money to get the service organization into its new digs. It’s called “The Long Walk Home.”

The event is a short walk — a meander, really — beginning at on Saturday, Aug. 25 at 9:30 a.m. at ECHO’s current home, 6370 Atascadero Ave. at The First Baptist Church. The walk will head under the pedestrian tunnel, over the Lewis Ave. Bridge, past Galaxy Theatres, through the Sunken Gardens, and ending back at ECHO.

Registration is $35 and includes a T-shirt and five raffle tickets. The organization will raffle off dinners at Colby Jack in the Carlton Hotel, among other prizes. The walker who raises the most money will win an Apple iPad.

Longtime ECHO volunteer Robin Smith said there will be tours of the current ECHO facility, hot dogs, root beer floats and lots of shade.

“In bad times and in good times, you need a homeless shelter,” Smith said. “Homelessness happens. Everyone needs to chip in so people have a safe place to go. …“We have a lot of families, we have women with small children. When these women leave in the morning with their children and their strollers, they have nowhere to go. So when it’s 105 [degrees outside], it’s miserable, it’s dangerous.”

ECHO is North County’s only homeless shelter and has approximately 30 beds. At present, anybody using ECHO’s services are asked to leave the premises at 7:30 a.m. That’s part of what ECHO hopes to rectify. Once it has a permanent home, she said, the group would like to build a day area where children can be safe.

Which bring us back around to The Long Walk Home. The idea is the brainchild of Nancy Fiske who is now an ECHO volunteer following an introduction via Rotary Club of Templeton.

“I wanted to do something that was metaphorically related to what happens to people who use ECHO,” Fiske said. “So the idea of doing a short walk — not a long one — early in the day, is symbolic of the walk people take to get back into a home.”

To be clear, the Long Walk Home is not symbolic of a walk to ECHO, but instead is symbolic of a walk from ECHO into proper housing.

Furthermore, Smith said that the walk is optional. Folks are under no obligation to walk. But even if they do, it’s not actually a race but a friendly walk, so there’s no pressure.

The Long Walk Home has backing and participants from the majority of North County’s service clubs, including Kiwanis and Rotary clubs from Paso Robles, Templeton and Atascadero, Atascadero Elks Club, Paso Robles Lions and Templeton Quota. A comprehensive list wasn’t available at press time, so other groups could sign on in the interim.

But many North County churches and business have also signed on to help, St. Luke’s Methodist Church, Methodist Ministries and Fabulous Women’s Network of Paso Robles among them. Fiske even said that First District Supervisor Frank Mecham would read a resolution the county board of supervisors passed regarding the service groups involvement with ECHO.

Atascadero Mayor Bob Kelly will be the master of ceremonies and Atascadero band Those Guys will provide live music.

“It’s important to demystify who the homeless people are in our community,” Fiske said. “These are people just like you and I who have fallen on hard times.”

For more information or to register — or to donate and not even show up to the walk — go to www.echoshelter.net or call 440-6728 or 434-2236.

For the complete article see the 08-10-2012 issue.

Click here to purchase an electronic version of the 08-10-2012 paper.