A press release from the United Way of Allen County spells out the results of the recent Letter Carriers Food Drive.
Local residents stepped up to the challenge and collected 453,513 pounds of food for the 2009 Letter Carriers’ Food Drive. That number is 100,000 more pounds of food than last year.
Melton Gray, the local chair of the Letter Carriers’ Food Drive, challenged the Fort Wayne-area to collect more than 400,000 pounds of food this year and the community exceeded his expectations.
“What a great community!” said Gray. “Everyone knows times are tough right now and even people without much to give joined in the effort and donated all they could. I want to thank all the volunteers and letter carriers, too, as we were more organized and enthusiastic than ever.”
“I commend Melton and members of the local Letter Carriers union for doing such a tremendous job organizing the food drive,” said Jerry Peterson, President and CEO of United Way of Allen County. “Our agency partners and 2-1-1 phone counselors know that the need for basic services is rising dramatically and efforts such as this food drive help meet some of those needs.”
The 17th annual National Association of Letter Carriers’ (NALC) National Food Drive to “Stamp Out Hunger” is the largest one-day food drive in the nation. The drive is held annually on the second Saturday in May in more than 10,000 cities and towns in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands.
This year, donations were collected by more than 1,400 local branches of the 300,000-member Letter Carriers union and delivered to food banks, pantries and shelters that serve the communities where they are collected. Assisting in the effort were rural letter carriers and other postal employees, as well as members of other unions and thousands of civic volunteers.
Partners in the local and national effort included the National Association of Letter Carriers, the U.S. Postal Service, Campbell Soup Company, Feeding America, United Way of America and the AFL-CIO.
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