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The National Association of Letter Carriers (NALC) recently conducted the nation’s largest annual food drive on Saturday, May 8th. On that day, letter carriers will collected almost 15,000 pounds of non-perishable donations from homes as they delivered mail along their postal routes.
The 18th annual NALC National Food Drive to “Stamp Out Hunger” is held just before summer, in an effort to combat childhood hunger among children who are out of school for the summer. Last year, carriers collected a record 73.4 million pounds of food. Over 10,000 cities and towns in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and Guam participate.
Locally, this year’s donations were divided among Wesley House, The Salvation Army, and LOVE's Kitchen.
Over 125 million postcards, sponsored by the Campbell Soup Company and the US Postal Service, were mailed to postal customers to remind them of the drive. Valpak Direct Marketing Systems is focused 44 million of its envelopes on encouraging food donations. Television and radio public service announcements featuring David Arquette and Courtney Cox were made available throughout the country.
For the first time since this food drive began, the National Rural Letter Carriers’ Association , whose members have been instrumental in the drive’s past success, have become a full national partner with the 2010 drive. Other co-sponsors of the drive with the Letter Carriers’ Union are the US Postal Service’s Priority Mail; National Letter Carriers’ Association; Feeding America; United Way Worldwide and local United Ways; and the AFL-CIO.
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