May 12, 2012
Celebrates 20 years of feeding the hungry
It’s that time again when your trusted Marco Island letter carrier will be coming around to your home not only to deliver your mail but to also pick up food for needy families in our community as well as the Naples and Everglades area. May 12, 2012 will mark an important milestone for the NALC’s Stamp Out Hunger national food drive.
The NALC drive began at the local level in the late 1980s and went nationwide in 1992. Twenty years later, letter carriers all across America—including Puerto Rico, Guam and the Virgin Islands—still lead the charge in the sadly ongoing battle against hunger, helping to stock food banks, pantries and shelters for the summer months.
For the past two decades, the annual national drive has proved critical in helping millions of American families—postal customers—who are struggling to make ends meet during this continuing recession.
The drive, the largest one-day food-collection event in the nation, has been a success every year, but the needs are particularly sad, even staggering, in 2012.
Sixteen percent of all Americans are at risk of hunger—uncertain where their next meal may be coming from. That includes 1 in 5 children under the age of 18, plus 4 million seniors who are forced every day to choose between paying a utility bill and buying food, according to NALC President Frederic Rolando.
Last year, despite many obstacles, letter carriers proudly collected 70.2 million pounds of food, raising the total amount of donations picked up over the history of the drive to more than 1.1 billion pounds.
Some of our larger food banks are reporting declines in food inventories of as much as 35 percent from last year. Also, during the summer months most school lunch programs are suspended, many of us don’t realize that millions of children must find alternate sources of nutrition.
So, watch soon for the Publix grocery bag left by your letter carrier. When it arrives please fill it with unopened, non-perishable food items, such as cans of soup, boxes of pasta or dry cereal and leave it by your mailbox on the morning of Sat., May 12th.
