Letter Carriers Food Drive Collects 96,000 lbs for Food Bank

Contact: Hugh Minor
Director of Communications
RI Community Food Bank
401-230-1674 (direct)
401-524-2330 (cell)
[email protected]
MEDIA RELEASE
Letter Carriers Food Drive Collects 96,000 lbs for Food Bank
Donations of non-perishable food items will benefit neighbors in need throughout Rhode Island.
PHOTOS: Available Upon Request
PROVIDENCE, RI (May 13, 2015). The Letter Carriers Food Drive, held last Saturday , May 9, collected 96,298 pounds
of food for the Rhode Island Community Food Bank. This food will be sorted, processed, and distributed to 169 member
agencies of the Food Bank throughout the area to help people in need of food assistance.
“This food comes at a critical time, as we head into the summer months when we traditionally see food donations
decrease,” said Andrew Schiff, Chief Executive Officer. “We appreciate the tireless efforts of our letter carries,
volunteers, and of course, the postal customers who donated this food.”
The campaign, called Stamp Out Hunger, is coordinated across the country by the National Association of Letter Carriers.
Postal customers are simply asked to leave a bag of non-perishable food by their mailbox so that their letter carrier can
collected it and deliver it to the Food Bank where it can be dispersed to neighbors in need.
All year long, the Food Bank welcomes food donations during regular business hours at its headquarters at 200 Niantic
Avenue in Providence. Most-needed items include canned soup and vegetables, peanut butter, pasta, rice, canned
beans, tuna, and healthy cereals. As always, the food collected will be sorted by volunteers who check for use-by dates
and damaged packaging.
This year marks the 23rd anniversary of the Letter Carriers Food Drive, a national effort to fight hunger. Across the
country, partners supporting Stamp Out Hunger include the National Association of Letter Carriers (NALC), United States
Postal Service (USPS), AFL-CIO, Feeding America, National Rural Letter Carriers’ Association (NRLCA), United Way,
Valassis, and Valpak.
For more information, visit rifoodbank.org.
About the Rhode Island Community Food Bank
Founded in 1982, the Rhode Island Community Food Bank is a non-profit organization based in Providence, RI focused
on providing food to people in need and promoting long-term solutions to the problem of hunger. The Food Bank raises
funds to purchase nutritious foods and solicits, stores and distributes food products donated by supermarkets,
wholesalers, food processors, local farmers and community food drives. The food is distributed to the Food Bank’s
network of 169 member agencies. For more information, visit rifoodbank.org.
-endRI Community Food Bank · 200 Niantic Avenue · Providence, RI 0907· 401-942-6325 (main) · rifoodbank.org