Central Florida Letter Carriers work to Stamp Out Hunger! May 11, 2012

On Saturday, May 12, Central Florida letter carriers will again help Stamp Out Hunger! across America with your help. Now in its 20th year, the Stamp Out Hunger food drive, which is always held on the second Saturday in May, has become the nation’s largest single-day food drive. In 2011, generous Americans donated 70.2 million pounds of food, which marked the eighth consecutive year that at least 70 million pounds were collected by letter carriers.

This year’s food drive supporters include Campbell Soup Company, the U.S. Postal Service, National Association of Letter Carriers, Feeding America, Valpak, the National Rural Letter Carriers’ Association, the AFL-CIO, United Way and Uncle Bob’s Self Storage.

To help Stamp Out Hunger! this year, we’re calling on Central Florida residents to leave a sturdy bag containing non-perishable foods - such as canned soup, canned vegetables, pasta, rice or cereal - next to their mailbox prior to the time of regular mail delivery on Saturday, May 12, 2011. Local letter carriers will collect these food donations as they deliver the mail and take them to Second Harvest Food Bank of Central Florida. The local letter carriers will then collect donations from homes across the city and deliver them to Second Harvest.

According to Second Harvest, more than 350,000 Central Floridians are at the poverty level and are living on the brink of hunger; and, throughout the nation more than 35 million people are food insecure, hungry or at risk of hunger. Approximately one in four people in a soup kitchen line is a child.