Food Drive
The NALC & USPS will be conducting their annual Food Drive on Saturday May 13th. This year I have been appointed Food Drive Coordinator for Branch 6000. This will be the 31st year that the NALC has been involved with the Food Drive to feed the hungry in America! The food that we collect here on Long Island stays on Long Island and gets distributed by our food bank partner Island Harvest. As you know the past two years, we did not have a food drive due to the Covid pandemic and we took monetary donations from the stations instead and gave the money to Island Harvest to purchase food for the hungry.
As the economy gets worse more and more people turn to food banks to feed themselves and their families. In the last years, more than 53 million people have turned to food banks and community programs for help putting food on the table. And out of these 53 million people nearly 5.2 million are senior citizens and almost 9 million children are living in a food insecure household. These people are our customers, our neighbors, our families, and our friends.
We wake up every morning knowing that we will be able to put food on the table for ourselves and our family, but millions of Americans are uncertain of where their next meal will come from or if it will come at all. Sadly, 1 in 10 households don’t have enough food and due to the Covid pandemic it has become worse.
Soon the Branch will be sending out a mailing for Food Drive Coordinators for your local office. Every office should have a food drive coordinator whether it be the shop steward or his/her designee we need to communicate with every office to have a successful Food Drive. So please fill out the form indicating who will be the food drive coordinator for your office and mail it to the Branch.
I will try and get a food drive poster to every post office to post in their lobby. These posters have been approved by the USPS so there should be no issue with posting them. When the food drive poster arrives, please display it in the lobby where it can be seen by the public. I have Food Drive pins to distribute also, I will bring them to the Branch meetings to pass them out. You can wear the pin on the outside of your uniform. I would also ask you to give some pins to the window clerks for them to wear for more exposure for this event. At the end of April, I would appreciate it when you see your customers, please remind them that the Food Drive is May 13th. We must get the message out through word of mouth!
Our first meeting was held in late February at Island Harvest Headquarters in Melville. When I arrived there, there was a line two city blocks long for families getting food from Island Harvest. The meeting lasted for about an hour and a half. When I left the building after the meeting the line for food was the same if not longer.
I know there are carriers out there that do not want to participate in the food drive, all I can say to them is you should thank your lucky stars that you are not on that line for food and have to depend on people like you!
With inflation on the rise and our dollar getting stretch even thinner it is going to take a joint effort on all parts to have a successful Food Drive!
Thank you in advance for your cooperation in this important event in feeding the hungry of Long Island.
