Asheville area letter carriers ready to stamp out hunger
Posted 05/10/11
View the article at Asheville Citizen Times
CANTON — A funny thing happened to mail carrier Janie Savage one year during the Stamp Out Hunger food drive.
by Sandra Rodriguez
Someone had set groceries down by the door near the mailbox. Savage picked them up, thinking they were a donation.
“I picked it up and thought, ‘Ooh, great, a bunch,‘” she said. “I’m carrying it off, and I see cigarettes in it, and I said, ‘Oops, I don’t think so.’ She (the owner of the groceries) goes, ‘Oh, my gosh, you have my groceries.’ That was the biggest mix-up. She laughed then said, ‘I’m sorry I didn’t put anything out.‘”
Now, Savage looks closely before picking up donations during the mail carriers’ food drive, the nation’s largest single-day food drive that collects millions of pounds of nonperishable food items for food banks and pantries.
Mail carriers around the country, including Western North Carolina, will be doing double duty Saturday as they drop off mail and pick up donations, which will benefit local food pantries. Notifications will go into mailboxes as early as Tuesday, encouraging people to purchase canned food and leave it in bags or boxes near their mailboxes on Saturday.
It makes for a longer day for mail carriers, but it sure is worthwhile, at least for Savage.
“I grew up very poor,” she said. “I know hunger. And I think a lot of people still have a lot of compassion even if they have never known hunger, but personally I have. There were 12 children in my family. I know hunger, and when you know it personally, that may have a deeper place in your heart — to give and to help.”
It will also be a “terrifically” busy day for volunteers at Haywood Christian Ministry, which is coordinating with Haywood County’s mail carriers to receive the donations, according to assistant director John Berrong.
“It’s the most important food drive of the year,” Berrong said. “We get a lot of food from MANNA FoodBank, and what we get from the food drive supplements that for roughly a period of six months. The more we get the more we can give.”
The nonprofit, which provides emergency services and food assistance to Haywood families, packages and distributes to needy families a carton of food that can feed a family of four for at least one week.
Volunteer drivers in Haywood will intercept mail carriers on their routes and pick up donations and drop them off with Berrong at the nonprofit.
The scene will be played out at many food banks, like MANNA FoodBank in Buncombe County, and food pantries throughout the mountains, where community, church and school groups will meet to sort and package donations.
Donations will stay in local communities. For example, donations in Buncombe will benefit MANNA and its partner agencies. Donations from Haywood benefit Haywood Christian Ministries, the local Salvation Army, the Community Kitchen and Open Door Ministries.
Savage said she hopes the region’s generosity continues this year. With more post office branches participating, last year letter carriers from Murphy to Marion and Rutherfordton collected more than 226,000 pounds of food. It was 30,000 pounds in 1993.
“Last year the economy was still hurting, but we brought in a good amount more than we expected,” Savage said. “To me, it seems that when times are harder, we know there are people that are hurting worse than we are, and it opens our heart even more.”
