Letter Carriers Collect 61.7 Million Pounds Of Food In Annual Drive To “Stamp Out Hunger”
Letter carriers collected 61.7 million pounds of food donations in the 11th annual “Stamp Out Hunger” Food Drive and delivered it to local food banks and pantries to help needy families, the National Association of Letter Carriers (NALC) has announced.
Final results from the drive in more than 10,000 cities and towns in all 50 states and U.S. jurisdictions held lin May showed 61,680,790 pounds of non-perishable food collected in the drive, the nation’s largest one-day effort to combat hunger.
The amount includes a contribution of 1 million pounds of canned goods from the Campbell Soup Company, a major supporter of the drive along with the U.S. Postal Service.
NALC President William H. Young thanked the millions of American families who left food by their mailboxes and the thousands of letter carriers, rural carriers, and other postal employees and volunteers who collected and processed the donations for local food banks.
“In this struggling economy, the generosity of citizens in this food drive is truly remarkable,” Young said. “It comes as many food banks and pantries are in desperate need with empty shelves and dwindling resources as they try to help families facing hunger.”
Young also thanked the Postal Service and Campbell Soup Company, who together supplied 105 million postcards to promote the drive, as well as other major supporters: America’s Second Harvest, local United Ways, the AFL-CIO, and cartoonist Bil Keane, who provided a special “Family Circus” drawing for the drive.
Buffalo/Western New York NALC Branch 3, which collected 1,526,666 pounds of donations, was the top NALC local branch in the drive.