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Post office set for food drive

By Chyna Broadnax | Statesville R&L

Published: March 31, 2009

Post office employees want to do their part to help needy families.

Local letter carriers will participate in the National Association of Letter Carriers Stamp Out Hunger Food Drive.

On May 9, local postal employees are asking for donations of perishable food items. Postal customers are asked to leave the food items in a bag at their mailbox for carriers to pick up or deliver the items to one of the local contract post offices.

The food collected this year will be donated to Iredell Christian Ministries and Salvation Army.

Food Drive coordinator Tom Davis said letter carriers stopped the drive for a few years, but picked it back up last year because of a desire to help struggling local families.

"During the good times, (it) didn't seem like there was a need, but last year with the economy we decided to start doing it again," Davis said.

Post offices in Statesville, North Iredell, Olin, Scotts, Turnersburg, Union Grove and Harmony are participating.

Carriers are going to start putting postal cards in mailboxes on May 6, with instructions and information about the drive.

This is the 17th annual National Association of Letter Carriers Food Drive. In 2008, the drive collected more than 73 million pounds of food from postal customers nationwide. Since its inception, 909 million pounds of food have been collected.

Last year they collected 12,000 pounds of food.

The drive is important for ICM because it needs more food, said Executive Director Natalie Rickabaugh.
"We have more requests for food than we've ever had," she said.

In February, 526 families received food and 737 families have received food assistance in March.

Rickabaugh said if the numbers continue to grow, ICM will have to limit the number of people it serves.
"There's a greater need for food from this food drive than we've ever experienced in the past," she said.

Each week the ministry gets nearly 3,500 pounds of food from Second Harvest Food Bank in Winston-Salem. They also purchase food locally and receive donations from local stores in order to stock the food pantry.