Hazelwood Letter Carriers Collect Food Saturday to Stamp Out Hunger

Hazelwood residents will have the opportunity Saturday, May 11, to donate food to people in need as part of the Stamp Out Hunger National Food Drive. The event is sponsored by the National Association of Letter Carriers (NALC).

Letter carriers will collect donations of unopened, nonperishable food items left next to mailboxes. Goods can include food items like peanut butter, soups and canned tuna.

The St. Louis Area Foodbank received almost 220,000 pounds of food as part of the event. Overall, letter carriers in the bi-state region collected more than 724,647 pounds of food in one day. That equates to more than 591,500 meals. In 2010 it received more than 300,000 pounds of food.

The food bank has a network of nearly 500 food pantries in the St. Louis area that benefit from the fundraiser event.

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Communications coordinator Bethany Prange previously told Patch the food bank serves 57,000 people weekly. She said one in eight people in the bistate region are in need of food assistance.

Since 1993, the NALC has collected more than 1 billion pounds of food through the nationwide event, which is the largest single-day food drive in the U.S.

More than 1,500 NALC branches from every state, involving more than 10,000 cities and towns, are expected to have more than 230,000 letter carriers collecting nonperishable goods Saturday.