The Idaho Falls Rescue Mission will hold a “Walk in the Cold” 5K event on Saturday. The purpose of the event is to bring awareness to the struggles of the local homeless population.
“We intentionally do it in the cold,” said Tyler Perkins, the executive director of the Idaho Falls Rescue Mission. “So that people have the opportunity to come out and learn about the homelessness issue in our communities, who's helping take care of that, what that looks like, and also to raise awareness and support so that we can continue to take care of that for our communities.”
The Walk in the Cold event offers more than just a 5K run for participants. There will be sponsor and information booths. The Idaho Falls Rescue Mission seeks to inform and educate the community of the problems they work toward fixing with presentations and stats.
“We find most of the time is people in our communities, don't think that there's a [homeless] population with a need, or have never heard of the rescue mission and don't know that there's somebody working on those issues,” Perkins said.
The Idaho Falls Rescue Mission covers Eastern Idaho and parts of Western Wyoming.
“It's a huge area,” Perkins said. “Most of the rural areas have much smaller problems, of course, but we do receive guests and clients from those areas from time to time.”
Learn more about the Walk in the Cold 5K or learn how to make donations, what services they offer, volunteer opportunities and more on The Idaho Falls Resue Mission website.