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Postal carriers to collect food items
YOUNGSTOWN
Members of National Association of Letter Carriers Branch 385 in Youngstown are collecting food Saturday as part of the NALC’s 20th annual Stamp Our Hunger across America campaign.
Residents in Youngstown and the surrounding communities of Poland, Boardman, Austintown, Canfield and Cornersburg are requested to place nonperishable food items in containers at their mailboxes to be picked up by their letter carriers when they deliver mail.
Postal Service retirees and other volunteers will meet carriers along their routes to pick up the food collected and deliver it the main post office in Youngstown where it will be loaded into vehicles of the agencies receiving the food.
The food will be divided among four hunger-fighting agencies: Second Harvest Food Bank of the Mahoning Valley, Youngstown District Council of the St. Vincent de Paul Society through its food pantry at 317 Via Mount Carmel, Mahoning County Salvation Army and Gleaners Food Bank, said Ron Ruchtie, local food-drive coordinator.
Ruchtie, a 33-year postal service veteran who delivers mail in the Boardman area, said though there is evidence that the economy is improving, the need to help people struggling to put food on the table is still great.
Over the past five years, the local Stamp Out Hunger food drive collected between 160,000 and 210,000 pounds of food, Ruchtie said.
Stamp Out Hunger across America, the nation’s largest single-day food drive benefitting Feeding America, the nation’s largest domestic hunger-relief organization, last year collected 70.2 million pounds of food, the eighth consecutive year that at least 70 million pounds were collected by letter carriers.
The national food drive is a joint effort of NALC, the Campbell Soup Co., Valpak Direct Marketing, United Way Worldwide, AFL-CIO’s Community Services Network, Feeding America and Uncle Bob’s Trucking.