Stamp Out Hunger
The National Association of Letter Carriers Branch 6000 and the United States Postal Service Long Island District in partnership with Island Harvest will be conducting our 32nd annual STAMP OUT HUNGER FOOD DRIVE on Saturday May 11, 2024.
Island Harvest has been our partner in this worthy endeavor for as long as I can remember. This year I am honored to be working with Bena Halloran who is the Food Collection Coordinator for Island Harvest. I had asked her to come to the membership meeting on April 18th to give a presentation on how important our food drive is to the success of their program in providing food to the underprivileged on Long Island.
Island Harvest work with 300 Member Agencies, these are local food pantries that are here on Long Island. In 2022-2023, Island Harvest supported 13.5 million meals nearly 16.2 million pounds of healthy food and products through the Food Collection and Distribution Program. Island Harvest directly delivers food and support services to neighbors in need across Long Island, these efforts include: The Kids Weekend Backpack Feeding Program, School Pantry Program, Youth Produce Project, and Summer Food Service Program which distributed more than 777,630 meals to children at-risk for food insecurity at more than 105 sites. The Commodity Supplemental Food Program provided monthly USDA food boxes to 4000 seniors who are considered very low income at 87 sites. The Mobile Market supported nearly 30,000 households - including seniors, veterans, military families, active-duty personnel with more than 400,000 pounds of product supplementing over 320,000 meals.
This year with rising inflation more and more seniors and veterans who are on a fixed income will be looking to Island Harvest for support due to rising inflation cost not only on food and utilities but also prescription medication. Imagine having to make a choice between prescription medication or food, a choice I hope one of us never reading this article must make!
Over 42 million people, including 13 million children in America experience hunger daily. They go to bed not knowing where their next meal is coming from.
Soon schools will be closed for the summer and the food programs that these children depend on will not be there for them to have a hot breakfast and lunch meal. They will be depending on food pantries to help them get through the summer months.
Having been a letter carrier myself, I know the excitement of Stamp Out Hunger. It’s a fantastic day, and a source of great pride, knowing that you are helping the community that you serve.
I will be sending out food drive postcards to every post office, that will be delivered by you the week prior to the food drive. Every mailbox will have a postcard delivered alerting the community to place a bag of nonperishable food items outside their mailbox on Saturday May 11th
• Remember the food that we collect stays here on Long Island to help our local communities, family, and friends.
As I said at the Branch meeting, all the shop stewards this year will be food drive coordinators unless you appoint someone in your place.
I have a limited number of food drive bags that will be donated by RWDSU Local 338. Any post office that would like food drive bags please email me at: tsiesto@nalcbr6000.com. I know the number of deliveries for every office so there is no need to give me that information.
Without a successful food drive, the food banks could be turning away those in need due to a lack of food. So, please participate by doing your part delivering the postcard and food drive bags if your post office receives them and picking up non-perishable food items at the mailbox on Saturday May 11th
I would like to thank all the letter carriers of Branch 6000 that will be working extra hard that day delivering mail and collecting food to make this year’s food drive a success!
