USPS food drive confronts scourge of hunger in America

Local letter carriers will handle today, free of charge, thousands of pounds of unaddressed packages marked for delivery to the cabinets of needy families.

Postal workers from Kinston and surrounding towns will join postal employees and volunteers in more than 10,000 cities nationwide in collecting food as part of the 19th annual “Stamp out Hunger” food drive. The food-raiser is part of the nation’s largest one-day drive, coordinated each year on the second Saturday in May by the National Association of Letter Carriers, the labor union of door-to-door postal workers.

“Hunger is a constant,” said Tab Brown, a Kinston mail carrier who is coordinating the city’s pick-up this year, as well as those in La Grange, Pink Hill, Snow Hill, Seven Springs and Mount Olive. “Not everyone has the option to get up and go to their cupboard anytime they want a bite to eat.”

Brown said carriers will collect nonperishable food items — such as bags of rice, boxes of pancake mix and canned goods — left in grocery bags underneath porch mailboxes or hanging on the posts of curbside mailboxes as they go along their routes. No glass containers or homemade goods will be accepted.

Forces of local postal employees and area volunteers will then meld together to distribute the goods locally to community food banks, pantries and shelters help restock the charities for needy families to use throughout the summer.

“This will help fill the gap a little bit of those children home during the summer who received a free-and-reduced lunch while in school or the food insecure households of senior citizens on a fixed income,” Brown said.

Demands for food assistance have reached record highs as the result of the worst recession since the Great Depression and, most recently, of a string of natural disasters that ravaged the South and Midwest. Government reports show that more than 50 million American families — including 17.2 million children — are living in homes lacking sufficient food.

After 19 years, the charity effort has amassed about a billion pounds of donations, according to the NALC, including 77.1 million pounds last year — the largest haul yet.

Close to 11,400 pounds of last year’s total came from within the Kinston U.S. Postal Service District. To put it another way, that is enough food to fill roughly 150 of the large canvas hampers that hold parcels at a post office.

“The food collected will not go to Charlotte or Raleigh,” Brown said. “It will stay locally and benefit those that are helping their neighbors.”

Brown said this year his team is hoping to match the days of the drive before the recession when the local collection averaged annual totals of 14,000 to 15,000 pounds.

“Anything near that figure or above it would be great, but we are just trying to collect as much as we can,” he said.

Fredric Rolando, National Association of Letter Carriers president, has high hopes that food drive coordinators can expand on last year’s record of 77 million pounds.

“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 stated in a special appeal this week to the union. “Our hard work and sacrifice will not go unnoticed, I assure you.”

Given the forecast for rain Saturday, donations might be down this year. But Brown said residents can drop off donations at their local post office directly, he said, or they can call and coordinate a pick-up time.

Wesley Brown can be reached at 252-559-1075 or wbrown@freedomenc.com.

Breakout:

Celebrity status

With help from key national partners, National Association of Letter Carriers President Fredric Rolando said food drive coordinators have the tools in the place to expand on last year’s “Stamp out Hunger” food drive record of 77 million pounds of food collected.

- A special promotional food drive poster, featuring artwork by cartoonists Bil and Jeff Keane, has been distributed for display in thousands of post office lobbies across the country

- National partner Valpak is urging nearly 44 million postal customers to participate in the drive via an announcement placed prominently on the front of its familiar blue envelopes

- Actor and musician Nick Cannon is featured in PSAs produced by Campbell Soup and the national food bank network Feeding America, both national sponsors of the Stamp out Hunger drive. Cannon also is featured on more than 82 million drive-promoting postcards sponsored by another national partner, the U.S. Postal Service