Boy Will Walk 668 Miles for Homeless

(May 11) -- When Hurricane Charley devastated Florida in 2004, it spun off a whirlwind of a very different kind. He’s a red-headed dynamo who's on a mission to make sure every child has a home.

Zach Bonner is a little boy with big ideas and a gift for giving. For nearly half his life, the 11-year-old from suburban Tampa has devoted himself to helping others. He’s appeared on TV shows, received national awards and met with presidents.

Now, Zach has embarked on his most ambitious project -- starting out Monday on a walk that will take him from Atlanta to the nation's capital. It's all to benefit homeless kids.

He took the first step in his remarkable journey when he was only 6.

If the forecasts had been correct back in 2004, Zach's hometown of Tampa, Fla., would have suffered the worst of Charley. But the Category 4 monster took a surprise turn and slammed into Port Charlotte, a couple of hours south. People were caught off-guard and desperately needed help.

Zach heard the news on the radio and asked his mother, Laurie Bonner, if he could donate the water their family had stockpiled for the storm. She agreed. But that wasn't enough for the budding philanthropist. Zach canvassed the entire neighborhood, pulling his red wagon from house to house, collecting bottled water and other supplies.

"I said, 'That was good, Zach, you've done the whole neighborhood,'"Bonner told the St. Petersburg Times. "He said, 'Why can't we go to another neighborhood?'"

Within 4 months, Zach and his older sister, Kelley, had collected 27 pickup truckloads of aid for Charley’s victims.

By the time he was 7, Zach had created his own nonprofit organization, the Little Red Wagon Foundation, so he could take on larger projects.

Bonner encouraged him to find a focus for his charity work.

“After I’d done a couple of projects, my mom was joking with me and she said ‘Well, what are you going to do now?’ I said I wanted to help homeless people,” Zach said Monday in a telephone interview with KOL. “She said that maybe I should focus on something a little bit smaller. And so I decided on helping homeless youth.”

He raised money, collected supplies and threw holiday parties for kids uprooted by Hurricane Katrina. He assembled 1,200 "Zachpacks" -– backpacks filled with snacks, personal-hygiene items and toys –- and distributed them to homeless kids nationwide.

The grade-schooler even came up with a way to rally teenagers around his cause. He launched Project 24 Hours to simulate what it would be like to be homeless for a day. High school students are given an appliance box and must spend 24 hours living in it. This video shows how they do it.

Zach was inspired to walk for charity when he watched a documentary about Mildred Norman, the “Peace Pilgrim,” who walked 25,000 miles during the last 28 years of her life to spread her anti-war message.

"I just thought the whole entire walk idea was a really good idea. I thought it would raise a lot of awareness," Zach told KOL. "My mom said maybe I should wait until I was a little bit older to do it. But then in 2007, I heard about that November being the first National Homeless Youth Awareness Month and I decided I would do the walk then."

Zach traversed 280 miles from Tampa to Florida’s capitol building in Tallahassee in 23 days. He raised $25,000 and learned some important lessons about long-distance walking.

"The first five days is absolutely horrible. Your body hurts so bad," he recalled when asked about the worst part of his marathons. "But after that, it seems to get easier."

The best part, not surprisingly, comes at the end.

"It's really cool to see that you've actually walked that amount of miles … and to be able to see who you’ve been able to help."

A year after his first trek, Zach was on the road again -- walking another 280 miles from Tallahassee to Atlanta to raise $17,000 for a Habitat for Humanity home. He arrived at the Georgia Capitol on his 11th birthday and charged up the steps pumping his fists into the air like Rocky Balboa.

Now comes the most grueling round in his fight to end child homelessness.

Underway on his 668-mile trek from Georgia to D.C., Zach must walk 11 to 13 miles a day, rain or shine, to reach his goal of reaching the nation's capital by July 9. That means hours on the road every morning, speeches to groups at schools or parks most afternoons, and still more miles to go before he sleeps.

He knows from experience there will be times when the going gets tough.

"Knowing that what I'm doing is helping kids" is what sustains him, explained Zach. "Even if my walk only helps one child, it would be completely worth it to help that one kid out."

As always, his mother and sister will be with him every step of the way. They will take turns walking beside him and driving one of the support vehicles. There's an RV donated by the Lazydays Partners Foundation and a little Volkswagen. It's red, of course.

There are more ways than ever to follow Zach on this adventure. He has a GPS unit that constantly updates his location on a Zach Tracker Web page. Fans can follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/ZachyB1. A film crew is traveling with him to document the walk. All of this and more will be available in the Philanthropy Project area (http://www.aolnews.com/philanthropy) that debuts on AOL May 11 to coincide with the beginning of Zach’s walk. KOL also will provide coverage for its young audience.

Both sites will have links for kids to send President Barack Obama e-mails about child homelessness and any other issues that are important to them. Zach also will collect letters along the route.

His plan is to hand-deliver all of them to the president at the end of his journey.

Talk about your audacity of hope.

How many adults could imagine themselves mobilizing an army of volunteers and trudging hundreds of miles to personally enlist the president’s support for their cause? For one Florida fifth-grader, it seems to come as naturally as putting one foot in front of the other.

"I that believe everyone can make a difference no matter how old or how young you are, no matter how much you have to give," Zach told KOL.

"You don't have to do something as big as a walk. You can do something as small as a can drive in your neighborhood or in your church or in your class. It doesn't have to be something huge because everything adds up."