Stamp Out Hunger: The Largest Single-Day Food Drive in America is Saturday

McDonald's restaurants may proudly boast “Over a Billion Served,” but the National Association of Letter Carriers can say the same when it comes to pounds of food collected for the needy.

Since 1993 the NALC has collected more than one billion pounds of food through its annual nationwide event, "Stamp Out Hunger" – America’s largest single-day food drive.

This Saturday, more than 1,500 NALC branches from every state, involving more than 10,000 cities and towns, will have more than 230,000 letter carriers collect non-perishable goods from people’s mailboxes.

Here in Middlesex County, your non-perishable food donations will benefit the Shoreline Soup Kitchens & Pantries in Old Saybrook and Middletown's Amazing Grace food pantry. Most-needed now are low-sodium soup, fruit juice, canned ham, breakfast cereal, and canned vegetables, beans, ravioli or chili.

Both Amazing Grace and SSKP serve more than 780,000 meals per year or 65,000 meals per month.

Across the country, many have banded together to advertise for the day’s collection, including Publix food stores, which will again provide more than 8 million plastic bags for delivery to customers throughout Florida, Georgia and South Carolina. Campbell’s, a long supporter of the drive, will donate one pound of food (up to one million pounds) to Feeding America for every person who joins the Stamp Out Hunger Facebook community. Additionally, you can join Stamp Out Hunger on Twitter to follow the national collection online as food is gathered this Saturday. 

Residents can leave non-perishable food in bags next to mailboxes if donations exceed the mailbox size. Because the drive has gotten so big, Anderson said he’ll take a spin around town to collect food in his pick-up truck if the letter carriers can't fit all the donations in their mail trucks.

According to the NALC, the need for donations is greater than ever. The organization stated, “According to the Agriculture Department's most recent study of food security in the United States in 2009, the number of Americans living in so-called 'food insecure' homes topped 50 million. Of those, 17.2 million are children.”

Last year, Tampa, Florida NALC Branch 599 collected 2,062,529 pounds to emerge as the top local union branch in the country.