If you wondered why you may have gotten a brown paper grocery bag in your mailbox this week, it's for a good cause.
The bag is there for residents to fill up for the 26th annual 'Stamp Out Hunger' food drive. On Saturday, Omaha mail carriers from each of the city's twelve post offices will collect non-perishable food donations for the drive while on their routes.
Andrea Malena with the National Association of Letter Carriers tells NewsRadio 1110 KFAB that the food drive aims to reduce food insecurity in the metro area. "Food insecurity is rampant in the United States. One in five families are food insecure, that means that they don't know where their next meal is coming from. Elderly people on fixed incomes, it's really difficult for them sometimes because they have to decide on whether they're going to pay for their medication or whether they're going to eat."
Malena says even if you didn't receive a brown bag, you can definitely still donate to the cause. "Just load up any grocery bag full of food, we will take anything, or fill your mailbox with cans. Non-perishable donations would be greatly accepted. Plastic jars preferably over glass, so we don't break anything." If you are leaving food out for your mail carrier, be sure to have it by 9:00 AM, so no one misses out.
Donations can also be dropped off at your neighborhood post office branch between 3:30 PM and 6:00 PM. "That's when the carriers will be coming back to the stations and will be unloading all of the donations from their trucks and putting them onto bigger trucks to go to the pantries that we're helping." Two locations, Leavenworth and Benson, won't be accepting drop-off donations as they will be dropping off directly to the pantries.
Since 2013, Omaha’s “Stamp Out Hunger” food drive has drastically increased donations year after year and was named one of the top 110 food collection branches in the nation. In 2017, a record-breaking total of 388,969 pounds of food was collected by mail carriers in Omaha. All donated food stays in the Omaha area and will be delivered to local food banks and homeless shelters serving individuals and families in our community.
You can see more about 'Stamp Out Hunger' here.