GREEN BAY, WI (WTAQ) – Remember to leave a bag of non-perishable food items at the end of your driveway this weekend in order to support a major food drive.
The 27th annual “Stamp out Hunger Food Drive” will be conducted by the National Association of Letter Carriers this Saturday, May 11.
The event originally popped-up in a few larger cities, until it started to grow bigger and eventually reach 10,000 cities and all fifty states.
“The Letter Carrier Food Drive is the largest one day food drive in the whole United States,” says Vicki Lewis-McKee, a Food Drive Coordinator with the Packerland Post Office.
The goal is to replenish local food shelves, which often are filled around winter-holidays, but can become barren around the time that spring arrives.
“Six days a week, letter carriers see first-hand the needs in the communities where we work and we’re committed to helping meet those needs,” says Lewis-McKee. “The Postal Service’s network makes it possible for us to provide this critically needed assistance.”
Even though the event is carried out on a national level, all the food collected goes to support local food assistance programs.
“Last we collected, locally, 166,000 pounds,” she explains. “That’s Green Bay and De Pere.”
When you expand the scope to all of Northeast Wisconsin it becomes even more impressive.
Lewis-McKee says mail carriers traversing Northeast Wisconsin hauled in over 281,000 pounds of food last year thanks to the generosity of the community.
Organizers say the effort will be ongoing throughout the area this Saturday.
“Out to Shioctin, all the way up Door County,” she explains. “Down as far as Kaukauna and Appleton.”
It’s as simple as putting together a bag of non-perishable food items and leaving it outside in order for it to be collected.
“We have people put it out by their mailbox by 9 o’clock in the morning,” says Lewis-McKee. “We have volunteers that start going around at 9 o’clock.”
Those volunteers are needed in order to ease the burden placed on the mail carriers, who wouldn’t be able to handle the sheer volume of donations by themselves.
Organizers simply ask for the bags to be sturdy and for donations to avoid glassware as much as possible.
They are in search of any common non-perishable items, such as canned soup, pasta, peanut butter, cereal, etc.
Last year, the effort benefited twenty-three local food programs throughout Brown County.
For Lewis-McKee, she can vouch first hand that there is a need for food donations in the area.
“I have friends that they don’t know whether they should buy their medicine or buy something to eat,” says Lewis-McKee. “And it’s a shame.”
More information on the event can be found here.
