Get ready to give

ORANGE PARK – Each May, the National Association of Letter Carriers hosts a nationwide campaign to help curb hunger in America.

The 25th Annual Stamp Out Hunger food drive serves as the largest single-day food donation for communities across the country.

Nearly 49 million Americans – 1 in 6 – are unsure where their next meal is coming from. This includes 13 million children as well as about 5 million seniors over age 60 – many of whom live on fixed incomes and often are too embarrassed to ask for help.

Locally, food pantries who help the needy rely on the letter carriers’ food drive to re-stock their shelves during the spring drought of giving.

“For us it is the biggest day of the year for receiving large food donations,” said Terry Rollen of the Clothes Closet and Food Pantry of Orange Park. “This is very critical for all the food pantries [in Clay County].”

Rollen’s organization receives food from the Kingsley Avenue and College Drive post offices, with sorting taking place at St. Catherine’s Catholic Church. According to Rollen, they are always in need of volunteers at all locations, either for lifting boxes of food, sorting food, or transporting food via pickup trucks.

The event is on May 13 this year, with volunteers needed between 2 p.m. until around 7:30 p.m. according to literature distributed by Rollen. Pizza, snacks and water will be provided to volunteers.

Carriers will pick up the bulk of the donations on their routes that day, but for those who will be out of town or want to donate early, donations are accepted as soon as Monday of next week. Brown paper bags will be provided by the post offices along with a card detailing the items that will be accepted for donation. Rollen advises leaving the items in donors’ mailboxes to make sure nothing gets picked up by dishonest citizens before carriers make it to the box.

Rollen’s food pantry, which mainly serves Northern Clay County, will receive donations from the two USPS branches listed above, but post offices and food banks will be collecting food throughout the county.

“There is a lot of need countywide,” Rollen said, “even though the economy has gotten better.”

Rollen said that in Northern Clay, her organization provides food and clothing to about 7,500 people every year.

Since 1993, when the national food drive began, letter carriers in every part of the country have worked with family members, friends, other postal co-workers and allies to use the second Saturday in May as a day to give something back to the communities that know and trust us.

“Too many people in this country are going hungry,” said Fredric Rolando, NALC president. “We know this to be true because we see it as we deliver to every address in America at least six days a week.”

Last year, the food drive collected a record 80 million pounds of nonperishable food, raising the total amount of donations picked up over the quarter-century history of the drive to more than 1.5 billion pounds

For more information on how to get involved with the food drive, contact Rollen at (904) 269-5491.