Food drive helps local charities
By Becky Barclay
Published in News on May 13, 2017 11:38 PM
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News-Argus/STEVE HERRING
Erik Hoffman was one of the many volunteers helping unload and load food collected during the Stamp Out Hunger food drive. The volunteers were working at the Berkeley Boulevard office of the Postal Service.
Wayne County's hungry will be a little less hungry for the next few months, thanks to the efforts of local letter carriers.
The 24th Stamp Out Hunger food drive was conducted Saturday in Goldsboro, sponsored by the National Association of Letter Carriers.
Earlier last week, the mail carriers left cards about the food drive in mail boxes. At the end of the week, they also left blue plastic bags in mailboxes for residents to put nonperishable foods in.
Food Lion sponsored the food bags, which were not available at last year's food drive.
At the end of the day Saturday, letter carriers arrived back to Goldsboro's two post offices with trucks and cars filled with food, which volunteers unloaded and loaded onto a truck to be weighed before the food was distributed to local charitable agencies.
"I was impressed with the amount of food donated this year," said Amanda Magera, local Stamp Out Hunger coordinator. "From talking to all the carriers, every route picked up more than they did last year. I'm crossing my fingers that we get to our 18,000-pound goal and even surpass it this year."
The total amount of food collected won't be known until the end of this week because people can still drop off their donations to both postal service offices through the middle of the week.
"It's just so rewarding," Ms. Magera said. "How many people we're actually going to feed with this food is tremendous. The local food pantries will have plenty on hand for quite a while.
"We work a lot of long hours and are everywhere in this community. We touch every home in this community. It's just knowing that we're doing a good thing and contributing our time and efforts."
This year's recipients are Community Soup Kitchen, Salvation Army, Community Crisis Center, Society of St. Vincent de Paul, United Church Ministries, Wayne Uplift Domestic Violence Assistance and Make a Difference Food Pantry.
On hand to help unload the donated food were volunteers with the Community Crisis Center, including director Adeen George. The center has received food from the drive for eight years.
"If we didn't get food from the drive, some people would not be able to get food from the Community Crisis Center," Ms. George said. "It's a lot of food and people will get something to eat now. People know when the food drive's on and people will be in line when we open our doors Monday."