JANN HENDRY/Acorn Newspapers ZACH’S PACK—Zach Bonner walks along Adamor Road past a supportive group of Lupin Hill Elementary School students last Friday in Calabasas. He walked from Florida to the nation’s capital. Zach Bonner, an 11-year-old Florida resident who wants to raise awareness about homelessness by walking thousands of miles across the United States, received a hero’s welcome when he arrived at Lupin Hill Elementary School on Oct. 16.

The “Zach Pack,” a group of fifth-grade students who’ve been planning for Bonner’s visit for several months, surrounded the boy on Thousand Oaks Boulevard early Friday morning and escorted him to the Calabasas school where a special assembly was hosted in his honor.

Zach started his sojourn when he was just 7 years old after seeing the devastation that Hurricane Charley wreaked on the families of southwest Florida in 2004. The boy collected water bottles in his little red wagon to donate to people left homeless by the storm. By the time he was finished, Zach had collected and distributed about 27 truckloads of provisions, according to information supplied by Zach’s own Little Red Wagon Foundation, a group that encourages kids to become philanthropists.

In 2006 Zach began his “My House to the White House” walkathon. He trekked 280 miles from his home in Tampa to Tallahassee, the Florida capital. He then walked from Tallahassee to Atlanta, Ga. in 2008. On May 11 this year, Zach started his twomonth, 668-mile final leg from Atlanta to Washington, D.C.

During the trip he raised $50,000, which will be used for play equipment at an emergency foster care shelter in Tampa and for other supplies and necessities at Sasha Bruce Youthwork, a group that helps runaways and homeless children in the region.

One of Lupin’s fourth-grade classes began following Zach’s journey last year and he eventually agreed to visit the Calabasas campus.

Zach told students at the Lupin Hill assembly that 1.3 million children live without a home. Two hundred homeless children joined him on a portion of his walk to the nation’s capital, he said.

“I believe our generation can make a difference,” said Zach, who encouraged the students to write a letter to President Obama. “It’s important for him to know.”

Zach walks an average of 13 miles per day and is accompanied by his mother, sister and brother. An RV was donated to the family to help make their daily walks more comfortable.

Zach said he stays on top of his studies by taking online courses.

When asked what message he wanted to share with fellow students, he said, “You’re never too young to change the world. You don’t have to do a huge project, you can do small things,” he said. Walking through various states has provided Zach with some real-world lessons.

“It’s really neat to learn stuff on the road,” Zach said in an interview after the school assembly.

One fond memory of his travels, he said, was seeing and listening to the the bobwhite quail in Georgia and North Carolina.

“When it chirps it sounds like its saying ‘bob white,’” Zach said. When he mimicked the sound the birds seemed to speak back to him.

Zach also found the Georgia landscape lovely to behold. “Everywhere you looked it was white because of the cotton fields,” he said.

To show Zach how much they appreciated his efforts, the Lupin students gave him a pair of custom sneakers in the colors of the Little Red Wagon Foundation— red, black and white. Students also donated money into a jar and raised $200 for the foundation.

Las Virgenes Unified School District Board of Education President Dave Moorman said Zach was an “inspiration.”

“You show us that if you see something that is not right in the world . . . you can do something about it,” Moorman said.

Jamie Alcroft, executive director of the Las Virgenes Educational Foundation, told students to imagine that they too had a little red wagon that could be filled up with kindness.

Caitlin Gallagher, a fifth grade student at Lupin, summed up Zach’s goodness. “He’s just a person who loves giving and helping people.”

Zach has more big plans for the future.

Michael Guillen—a threetime Emmy Award winner, author, former ABC News science editor and former Harvard University instructor who now lives in Calabasas and is president of the Philanthropy Project—is producing a feature film about Zach’s story.

Screenwriter, Patrick Sheane Duncan (“Mr. Holland’s Opus” and “Courage Under Fire”) is writing the screenplay. Filming will start early next year.

“It will be the amazing story of a kid who wants to make a difference in America,” Guillen said. “The most enchanting part of Zach’s story is that he is just a regular kid.”

Guillen describes him as a “40-year-old-man inside an 11year-old’s body.”

Zach’s next journey will be his longest. He plans to walk from Tampa to Los Angeles in five months starting in summer 2010.