News

The 19th annual NALC Stamp Out Hunger food drive—the USA’s largest one-day drive—provides letter carriers, other postal employees and thousands of volunteers across the nation the opportunity to meld their forces together to conduct the drive in communities across America. The goals: to help restock community food banks, pantries and shelters for needy families throughout the summer, and to build upon the 1 billion pounds of non-perishable food collected since 1992 from millions of generous postal customers. The drive is held each year on the second Saturday in May.



Demands for food assistance have reached record levels from what seems to be an almost endless line of victims of the worst recession since the Great Depression. National and local NALC food drive coordinators hope to expand on last year’s record of 77.1 million pounds of donations collected along postal routes, and with help from key national partners, they have promoted the Stamp Out Hunger drive by filling the airwaves with radio and television public service announcements (PSAs), publishing newspaper and magazine advertisements, engaging online communities via social networks, and creating hundreds of unique events both to attract public attention and to encourage postal customers to place bags of food by their mailboxes on May 14.



National Association of Letter Carriers President Fredric V. Rolando made a special appeal to active and retired members, asking us all to make an extra effort to ensure that this year’s drive will be a success. To hammer home the point, Rolando noted government reports that show that more than 50 million American families—including 17.2 million children—are living in homes lacking sufficient food.



“May 14 is the one day in the year when letter carriers take control of the conversation about hunger in America, making a loud-and-clear case for providing a chance for millions of families, and millions of children, to have a hunger-free summer,” Rolando said. “Our hard work and sacrifice will not go unnoticed, I assure you.”



For more information visit the NALC food drive web page at; http://www.nalc.org/commun/foodrive/index.html