The National Association of Letter Carriers (NALC) will host their 31^st Annual Stamp Out Hunger! Food Drive on Saturday, May 13, 2023.  Since 2014, Stamp Out Hunger has brought in over one million pounds of food for our Coastal Georgia communities.  Nationwide the NALC has collected about 1.82 billion pounds of food in the 30 years since the effort began.  Stamp Out Hunger is the nation’s largest single-day food drive.

Letter Carriers are a part of every neighborhood in the nation and they see the growing need for food assistance in our communities on a daily basis.  There are 34 million Americans that struggle with the issue of food insecurity and do not know where or when they will get their next meal or how they will feed their children.  As long as hungry Americans exist, this food drive will continue to be instrumental in replenishing the shelves of local food banks. 

On May 13^th, residents are encouraged to fill grocery bags of nonperishable food items and place them at their mailbox prior to mail delivery on Saturday.  The letter carriers will retrieve the donations as they deliver the mail and then deliver the donations to Second Harvest. 

The timing of this food drive is crucial as Second Harvest preps for Summer Feeding.  We plan to provide summer meals to 4,000 kids each day at approximately 75 locations starting June 1^st.  Summer is a tough time for children that typically receive a free breakfast and lunch at school and an even more stressful time for the parents trying to compensate for the lack of these meals.  The National Association of Letter Carriers Stamp Out Hunger! Food Drive comes at a time when food drives and retail donations have diminished.  Our warehouse is critically low on the supply of products needed for local pantries and agencies.  We are optimistic that 2023 donations will surpass the 36,734 pounds collected in 2022, the first year back for Stamp Out Hunger! after a two-year hiatus due to the Covid pandemic.