MAINE LABOR UPDATE
May 11, 2007

An Information Service of the

Maine AFL-CIO
www.maineaflcio.org 

Please Forward to Maine Working Families

NOTE- Text (in an e-mail) in blue or red is a direct web link to a full text source

LETTER CARRIER'S ANNUAL FOOD DRIVE
Your Chance to Help Fight Hunger

FROM THE PRESIDENT'S DESK


Ed Gorham
President
Maine AFL-CIO

The Maine and the National AFL-CIO are strongly supporting the annual NALC food drive. We urge all union brothers and sisters, and indeed all Maine residents, to participate tomorrow to help combat hunger.

The National Association of Letter Carriers (AFL-CIO) will hold the nation’s largest food drive this year on Saturday, May 12 in all 50 states and U.S. jurisdictions. Letter carriers will collect non-perishable donations as they deliver mail along their postal routes.

Everyone is being asked to leave non-perishable donations—such as canned meat, fish and soup, and cereals, pasta and rice—in a bag near their mailbox on Saturday, May 12 before their letter carrier arrives. It will be taken to the local post office and then delivered to a local food bank, pantry or shelter.

The food must be in its original, unopened containers and left in a bag near patrons' mailboxes before carriers make their regular deliveries at those locations. Suggested items include canned meat, fish and soup, and boxes of cereal, pasta and rice.
 

Plastic jugs of fruit and vegetable juice and other drinks are also acceptable, but glass bottles and other types of fragile containers should not be included, officials said.
 

We emphasize that donations will be delivered to food banks, pantries and shelters that serve clients in the same communities or general areas where they are collected.

The 15th annual NALC National Food Drive is the largest one-day food drive in the nation. Carriers collected 70.5 million pounds of food in the 2006 drive, the third consecutive year the effort has exceeded 70 million pounds.

The food will be collected in over 10,000 communities by nearly 1,500 local branches of the postal union, along with rural carriers and other volunteers. Donations will be delivered to food banks, pantries and shelters that serve the area where the donations are collected.

Since its inception in 1993, the nationwide drive has collected and delivered over three-quarters of a billion pounds of food—765.5 million pounds—to help hungry families.

NALC President William H. Young noted that the upcoming summer months “are a particularly critical time for millions of children whose school lunch programs are suspended until fall and their families must find alternate sources of nutrition.”

  “Letter carriers see these families every day as they deliver the mail,” Young said. “This food drive is one way we can help alleviate their plight and we encourage our postal patrons to participate by leaving donations by their mailbox on May 12.”