BRATTLEBORO — Members of the National Association of Letter Carriers are once again gearing up to deliver the largest one-day food drive in the U.S. - the 25th annual Stamp Out Hunger Food Drive.
On Saturday, May 13, letter carriers and their food drive partners, including members of the National Rural Letter Carriers' Association, will pick up donated food as they deliver mail - and make sure that it gets to a local food shelf.
Traditionally held on the second Saturday in May, Stamp Out Hunger has collected more than 1.5 billion pounds of food for the nation's food shelves during the past 25 years in more than 10,000 cities and towns around the U.S. and Puerto Rico.
Last year in Brattleboro, nearly 4,000 pounds of food was collected, according to Viv Woodland, a member of Letter Carriers' Branch 37 in Brattleboro and coordinator of the food drive in the Brattleboro area.
In an email to The Commons, Woodland said the drive is important for area food shelves.
“This is often a time of the year when food distributing organizations find that their stores are low as it is opposite in the calendar from holiday and end-of-year donating,” she wrote. “At the same time, the need for free, healthy food for families increases, as parents plan to feed more meals to their school-age children while they are home throughout the day in the summer.”
Woodland said mail carriers in Brattleboro, Guilford, Vernon, Putney, and Dummerston will participate in this year's food drive.
The most-requested nonperishable food items are cereal, pasta, pasta sauce, rice, canned fruits and vegetables, canned meals (such as soups, chili, and pasta), fruit juices, peanut butter, macaroni and cheese, canned protein (tuna, chicken, and turkey), and beans (canned or dry).
Monetary donations also are welcome, she said, and checks can be made out to Vermont Foodbank.