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The Wytheville Enterprise
Mark Sage
Tue May 19, 2009
By
Wayne Quesenberry/Staff
The 2009 Stamp Out Hunger Food Drive
by the National Association of Letter Carriers produced more items locally than
the previous year. The event, held May 9 with collections continuing for a few
extra days, resulted in 6,748 items weighing 8,200 lbs.
Stamp
Out Hunger is the nation’s largest one-day food drive. It also is sponsored by
the Campbell Soup Co., the U.S. Postal Service, Feeding America (formerly
America’s Second Harvest), Valpak, the AFL-CIO and United Ways of America. This
year marked the 17th year of the drive.
“It
was a great response,” remarked Margie Austin, supervisor for the Wytheville
Post Office. “With the economic times being what they are, we were surprised.
We’re really pleased with the amount of food collected.”
Wythe County’s postal customers were asked to
leave a sturdy bag of non-perishable canned goods beside their mailboxes for carrier
pick up. Those with post office boxes brought food items to the post office
lobby.
Among
the items donated were canned fruit, canned meat, spaghetti sauce in plastic
jars, crackers, canned soup, canned vegetables, peanut butter, dry cereal,
rice, canned beans, pasta and boxed macaroni and cheese.
The
items were again donated to Agape Food Pantry Inc. The local program provides
free supplemental food to Wythe Countians in need.
“It
was the best food drive we’ve ever had,” stated Joe Moore, chairman of the
Agape Food Pantry’s board of directors and coordinator with the post office for
the drive. “We won’t have to spend a lot of money to buy food for next month.
We really appreciate the support of everyone that donated food and helped in
anyway with the drive.”
According
to him, there were 6,748 food items collected this year. The post office
calculates the amount in pounds which Austin
estimated at 8, 200 lbs.
Last year’s Stamp Out Hunger produced 4,287 food items at a weight of 7,277
lbs.
“We
want to thank all the carriers and customers for their work and donations,” Austin stated. “A special
thanks is given to Troop 197 and 60 and their leaders for their help in sorting
and loading the food.”
http://www.swvatoday.com/comments/food_drive_beats_record/news/5239/
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