The Stamp Out Hunger food drive is back.
The annual event, which had to move online for the past two years because of the coronavirus pandemic, resumes in-person collection on Saturday, May 14.
This year, both options are available: Customers can follow the traditional route and leave bags of nonperishable food items by their mailbox, or they can contribute to the online donor drive. Both are spearheaded by the National Association of Letter Carriers, or NALC.
The food drive is timed for the second Saturday in May each year because late spring can be a crunch time for pantries. Students will soon leave school, where meals were often provided, but the holiday stockpile of donations is running low.
“We look forward to the day when no one in the country worries about feeding themselves or their families,” but until then, letter carriers will lend a hand to bring food to their tables,” said NALC President Fredric Rolando.
In addition to the Postal Service, NALC has partnered with several other groups for the drive: the National Rural Letter Carriers’ Association, the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union, Valpak, United Way Worldwide, CVS Health, the AFL-CIO, the Kellogg Co. and Valassis, a subsidiary of Vericast.
The union cautions that the in-person event is subject to change or cancellation if safety should become a concern. The online donor drive will continue in either case.