By MATT PIKE
St. Joseph Post
St. Joseph residents are encouraged to put food out by their mailboxes on Saturday to help with a growing hunger problem.
The Stamp Out Hunger Food Drive was developed in 1991 and has happened every year except for two years during the coronavirus pandemic.
President of Branch 195 of the National Association of Letter Carriers Dustin Hassler says the drive was developed to help aid a problem that shouldn't exist.
"It started this annual food drive, which is always the Saturday before Mother's Day, and since its inception the NLC through Stamp Out Hunger and the various food organizations we have collected over a billion pounds of food since its inception," Hassler tells KFEQ/St. Joseph Post.
On Saturday, postal carriers will be going house to house, collecting food and money donations to benefit Second Harvest Community Food Bank in St. Joseph
Hassler says mail carriers are almost the perfect collection mechanism for collecting food, going to almost every house in the United States on this day.
"During the course of the day enough carriers will end up and will just be carrying their routes as normal and walking around the community and the only thing the customer has to do is either set the sack of food out directly by their mailbox or put the donation envelope up like their sending a letter out," Hassler explains. "And the carrier will pick it up and bring it back to the post office."
Yellow donation bags and envelopes for money donations are going out through the week to residents for the food drive.
The need for food donations is currently great.
Second Harvest Community Food Bank CEO Chad Higdon says the need is great because since the pandemic the need for food has not declined.
"What we're seeing is just the amount of money that it takes to purchase food isn't going as far and some of the resources that we did see come through during the pandemic have gone away," Higdon explains. "And so, trying to keep up with the need we've had to reduce some donations, the shelves in our warehouse are a little more empty than they've been the last few years."
Higdon says food donations currently are critical to aid in the efforts of Second Harvest
