Largest one day food drive set for Saturday

The nation’s largest one day food drive is gearing up for this Saturday. the 17th annual “Stamp Out Hunger” drive is being sponsored by the National Association of Letter Carriers. Carriers around the nation collected a record 73.1 million pounds of food in last year’s drive. South Carolina District Postal Service spokesman Harry Spratlin says persons are asked to leave non-perishable food items in or near their mail boxes early Saturday morning. Postal carriers will be collecting the items during their regular Saturday deliveries.The items will delivered to local food banks. Spratlin says he would like to see a million pounds of food collected in the state this year.
“A lot of people out there are needy. so we’re hoping and asking for it and trying harder than ever to reach the public in many ways. all we can do is ask and we know our state has been really good to this food drive in years past so we’re just hoping for a little bit of that and a little bit more.”
Spratlin says with the growing unemployment rate in the state there are a lot of people in need of help right now.
Spratlin says persons who wish to contribute to the food drive should make sure that the first thing they do Saturday morning is to put those food items out for their local mail carrier to pick up. “Be sure to leave something out at the mailbox in the morning for the letter carrier. Just try to do early enough in the day to where he will be able to pick it up when he comes around for his regular delivery of the mail.”
Spratlin says persons may leave items in a paper bag or cardboard box.
Spratlin says as mail carriers return to their respective post offices, volunteers will be ready to see that the food gets to the proper places. “We’ll have volunteers waiting (at the post offices). These are volunteers from food banks, churches, also postal retirees are involved. They will take all the food and pack it into big boxes and then have trucks come and take it to the food banks.”
Spratlin says nationwide over 125 million post cards were mailed out to postal customers to remind them of the drive. The mailings were sponsored by the Campbell Soup Company and the U.S. Postal Service.