Sunday, May 13, 2012

National Letter Carriers Food Drive, What Happened?

Maybe your neighborhood was different, we had one lone blue bag sitting near our mailbox with a food bank donation of tuna, beans, and peanut butter. In the past, I remember the postal service distributing bags about a week before to remind us. And the plea seemed to come straight from the letter carriers, whom I love to support. Did they run out of funding to distribute the bags this year for "Stamp Out Hunger"?

I stopped at CVS about 10:00pm on Thursday night to restock our pantry with paper goods, and the friendly cashier offered me a special blue plastic bag to fill with non-perishables and leave for the mailman to pick up on Saturday morning. "They just sent us these bags yesterday," she said, "we'll never be able to use them up by tomorrow!" I told her I promote community service at a high school and she hefted a stack over the counter, "Then, can you help to spread these around?" I said I would, but was swamped with my Friday-only Attendance Secretary job and failed to get the bags distributed. 

The only way to be a food bank evangelist this weekend was to participate and hope my neighbors would see our blue bag hanging on the mailbox and follow suit. The problem was that unless they happened to visit CVS on Thursday or Friday--and what are the chances of that--they would not receive the specially designated donation bag. I did not see a single sack anywhere on Saturday, other than at our house. Maybe it's time to go back to the former means of distributing "Stamp Out Hunger" bags via the post office. Our local food banks need all the donations they can get, even if the postal carriers have to spend a little more time on the job distributing the bags. Isn't "Stamp Out Hunger" their signature event?

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