Welcome to Circle!

It's easy to participate. Just gather a bag of nonperishable food items and either leave it by your mailbox or bring it to your local post office. Letter carriers in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, Guam and the Virgin Islands will then collect the donations and deliver them to local community food banks, pantries and shelters.

This is the twelfth annual food drive, and this year the National Association of Letter Carriers and the Postmaster General will receive special recognition for their continuous dedication to the cause. Just five days before the event, William H. Young, president of the National Association of Letter Carriers (NALC), will accept a WHY-Chapin award from World Hunger Year (WHY) on behalf of all the letter carriers, at the WHY-Chapin Awards dinner in New York.

Young said the cause of fighting hunger is an especially meaningful one for the carriers. "Letter carriers are the heart and eyes of the community, walking and driving through every neighborhood and up and down every street," he said. "They see first hand the need, and they recognize the hardship and despair that denies families even the basic necessities of life."

Letter carrier prepares donated food for delivery to food bank

Bags of non-perishable food items hang from mailboxes in Roseburg, Oregon

Al Friedman, a food drive coordinator for the letter carriers in Florida, agreed. "A carrier once told me that he always saw the TV commercials about feeding people around the world, and now he feels so good about feeding the hungry right here in our own backyard," said Friedman. His branch in Clearwater, Florida, collected and distributed more than 900,000 pounds of food donations last year. That made the branch number one in its class across the country in terms of food collections.

The letter carrier branches throughout Central Florida collected about 10 percent of the 61.7 million pounds of food collected nationally during the one-day event last year. Friedman noted that support from the local business community is critical to success.

In central Florida, Kash n' Karry, a local supermarket chain, will print 5,000,000 promotional grocery bags to heighten awareness of and support for the program this year, and WFLA-TV will run free promotional announcements encouraging viewers to participate. "They'll also talk about it every night on the news, and they'll show the grocery bags to remind people to donate," he said.

The spirit of the event has now become a friendly competition between communities in central Florida to see which can generate the most donations. "I got the mayors of Tampa, St. Petersburg, and Clearwater, as well as the area county commissioners, to all meet at the Kash N Karry on April 30th and publicly challenge each of their cities to raise the largest amount of food during Stamp Out Hunger Week," he said. "It's a great way for the mayors to show how important this is for their cities."

As support for the annual letter carriers' national food drive grows, so does the need for food among the recipients.

In 2001, the number of Americans who were food insecure or hungry or at risk of hunger, was 33.6 million, according to the most recent statistics available from America's Second Harvest, a national organization comprised of more than 200 food banks and food rescue organizations.

Watch for the Next Issue of Circle! on June 7