Residents urged to help food pantries with donations on May 13

Date: 5/8/2023

On May 13, letter carriers hope to do more than just deliver your mail, they hope you will help them in making sure the region’s emergency food pantries are well stocked.

Across the nation, the 31st annual Stamp Out Hunger Food Drive will collect donations of food that people simply put out at their mail box. Lesley Vila, who is coordinating the local effort for the National Association of Letter Carriers, told Reminder Publishing every community in Western Massachusetts is participating.

The contributions of non-perishable food will stay in the community in which it is collected, she added.

The food donated by postal patrons will be collected by letter carriers. Some postal offices will have representatives of the food pantries pick up the donations at a post office, while others deliver the food items to the pantries.

“Each office does it differently,” she said and added in Agawam and West Springfield this year some of the food will go to a new recipient, the veterans program One Step Away.

Last year local letter carriers collected 200,000 pounds of food.

Mary Cassidy, the executive director of the Community Survival Center in Indian Orchard, the food pantry that serves Ludlow, Wilbraham, Hampden and the Indian Orchard, Sixteen Acres and Pine Point neighborhoods of Springfield, said donations are needed at this time of year.

Cassidy said the most wanted donations are items “a family can make a meal out of,” such as canned beef stew, chunky soups, tuna and chicken.

Both Cassidy and Vila stressed the importance of not donating out-of-date food which the pantries just have to throw out, adding to their operating costs.
Cassidy added that donations of homemade food items cannot be accepted.

Speaking of the letter carriers’ efforts, Cassidy said, “They do a great job.”

As noted on the NALC website, “The national, coordinated effort by the NALC to help fight hunger in America grew out of discussions in 1991 by a number of leaders at the time, including NALC President Vincent R. Sombrotto, AFL-CIO Community Services Director Joseph Velasquez and Postmaster General Anthony Frank. A pilot drive was run in 10 cities in October of 1991, and it proved so successful that work began immediately on making it a nationwide effort.

“Input from food banks and pantries suggested that late spring would be the best time since by then most food banks in the country start running out of donations received during the Thanksgiving and Christmas holiday periods.”