Food donations in Effingham benefit local food banks
May 12—The 30th annual National Association of Letter Carriers Stamp Out Hunger Food Drive will take place Saturday. In Effingham County, only the Effingham post office has confirmed that its carriers within the city will participate.
In partnership with local food pantries across America, as well as the AFL-CIO, Kellogg's, the National Rural Letter Carriers Association, Valpak, CVS Health, the United Way and VERICAST, U.S. Postal Service letter carriers nationwide will be collecting nonperishable food donated by customers along their delivery routes and delivering that food to their local food pantries.
This is the largest annual, single resupply effort for most food pantries.
"The food collected in Effingham will benefit Catholic Charities and the Cavalry Baptist Church food pantry," said Effingham Postal Supervisor Deana Dunaway. "The last time we held this we had a good turnout."
Postcards promoting the food drive were delivered this week to homes in participating communities.
"We really appreciate the efforts of the postal system and everybody that donates to the food drive," Catholic Charities Area Director Sr. Carol Beckermann said. "Especially at this time when food prices are going up so tremendously, it is becoming harder and harder for people to feed their families."
She said some of the basic needs they look for at this particular time is pancake mix, syrup, hamburger helper, cereals, peanut butter, crackers and canned vegetables.
The national, coordinated effort by the NALC to help fight hunger in America grew out of discussions in 1991 by a number of leaders at the time, including NALC President Vincent R. Sombrotto, AFL-CIO Community Services Director Joseph Velasquez and Postmaster General Anthony Frank. A pilot drive was held in 10 cities in October 1991, and it proved so successful that work began immediately on making it a nationwide effort.
Dunaway said residents can leave their nonperishable food items by their mailbox for letter carriers to collect.
Input from food banks and pantries suggested that late spring would be the best time since by then most food banks in the country start running out of donations received during the Thanksgiving and Christmas holiday periods.
A revamped drive was organized for May 15, 1993 — the second Saturday in May — with a goal of having at least one NALC branch in each of the 50 states participating. The result was astounding. More than 11 million pounds of food was collected — a one-day record in the United States — involving more than 220 union branches.
From Alaska to Florida and Maine to Hawaii, letter carriers did double duty — delivering mail and picking up donations. It just grew and grew from that point.
In 2010, the food drive surpassed the 1 billion pound mark in total food collected over its history.
Charles Mills can be reached at charles.mills@effinghamdailynews.com or by phone at 618-510-9226 or 217-347-7151 ext. 300126.
