Woman Raising Hunger Awareness By Running Marathons Across U.S.

PITTSBURGH (KDKA) - She's a marathoner on a mission.

After a marathon, runners may mention that they're starving or famished. But, one runner from Florida, is taking a message with her on the 26.2-mile Pittsburgh Marathon journey, raising awareness about real hunger issues in this country.

Jess Kurti sorted through boxes of donated food at the Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank distribution center in Duquesne.

A thousand miles away from home, she is here in Pittsburgh to run the marathon, In October, she started the Beast of Burden Challenge in the hopes of running a marathon in all 50 states and visit all 200 food banks in the Feeding America Network.

"The Pittsburgh Marathon has the food bank as a benefactor, which is, I'm so excited that I get to run for the team," Kurti said.

Jess has already visited 46 food banks in her travels and in her years as a runner, she has completed marathons in 48 states.

However, Jess says on her Facebook page that she'll end up running in some of those states again to complete her personal challenge as she takes her message of hunger awareness on the road.

"When a person donates to a food bank, the effectiveness of that is astonishing," Kurti said. "We can solve hunger, it is within our power, but we have to want to."

"By doing this, and she's also running the marathon while she's here, it's just a really cool process," Michael Johnson, of the Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank, said.

Johnson says awareness is so important. In the 11 counties this bank services, they know they're only reaching about one-third of the eligible people.

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