DONATING FOOD FOR THE HUNGRY
NALC FOOD DRIVE IS TOMORROW

Tomorrow, thousands of Americans will participate in the National Association of Letter Carriers (NALC) “Stamp Out Hunger National Food Drive.”

The nation’s largest one-day food drive will collect non-perishable food to help 35.5 million people, including 12 million children, who face hunger every day in America.

The process to donate is simple — donors place non-perishable food items in bags and leave them by their mailboxes. Carriers pick up the bags and deliver them to local food banks.

“This Stamp Out Hunger drive is a tradition entering its 17th year,” said PMG Jack Potter. “The generosity of our customers has filled food banks and pantries all across the nation. Our employees will further demonstrate their powerful reach into each of their communities and how our assistance helps those in need.”

To promote this year’s drive, the Postal Service — through its Priority Mail service — and Campbell Soup co-sponsored the printing of 130 million postcards encouraging the public’s participation. Public service announcements featuring movie and television stars David Arquette and Courteney Cox, as well as the Harlem Globetrotters, are being made available throughout the country. Valpak Direct Marketing Systems is focusing 40 million of its envelopes on encouraging food donations and Valassis is promoting the drive with 85 million of its mail-delivered Red Plum wraps.

Other co-sponsors of the drive are Feeding America, formerly known as America’s Second Harvest, the nation’s food bank network; the United Way of America and its local United Ways; and the AFL-CIO.

In 2008, NALC members from 1,500 local branches, with the assistance of rural letter carriers, other postal employees and numerous other volunteers, collected more than 73 million pounds of food from postal customers. That brought the total for the first 16 years of conducting the drive to nearly 1 billion pounds of food.