Community can help 'Stamp Out Hunger' on Saturday

May 10—Northwest Missouri residents will have the chance to give back to their communities this weekend by dropping off food right at their mailboxes.

Second Harvest Community Food Bank and the National Association of Letter Carriers are kicking off the 32nd annual Stamp Out Hunger Food Drive on Saturday, May 13.

"Stamp Out Hunger is the nation's largest one-day food drive," said Michelle Fagerstone, Second Harvest director of marketing. "This year, we will be at 22 communities and the food collected in each one of those communities will stay in those communities. We're able to do this with support from Evergy and of course, our own internal staff."

The Stamp Out Hunger Food Drive asks residents to fill bags left by their mail carrier with non-perishable food items. Mail carriers will pick up the bags and the items are distributed to nearby communities.

"Each post office decides whether they want to participate, then they work with their local postal carriers and agree to pick up those bags," Fagerstone said. "All we do is supply the bags and then they work with the local pantries to then take that food there and distribute it out. Overall, we will see about 65,000 to 75,000 pounds of food collected over those 22 counties."

For the first time this year, Second Harvest, located at 915 Douglas St., will also be a pick-up site for those who do not receive a bag but still want to donate.

The food will be distributed to communities in the area based on people's needs.

"Each community gets a different number of bags," Fagerstone said. "St. Joseph gets about 60,000 bags, where Hamilton will get 500 bags."

The program asks for non-perishable food items including cereal, canned vegetables, canned fruit, canned protein, pasta and peanut butter and jelly. They also offer a monetary donation option.

"So if individuals or families don't have time to run to the grocery store, they can always take that donation envelope and put a donation in and mail it back to Second Harvest," Fagerstone said. "We'll use those funds to purchase food for the program."

Fagerstone said Second Harvest and other local food pantries saw the impact of this program during the pandemic.

"During COVID, when we were not able to conduct the Stamp Out Hunger or food drive, we really saw how our partner agencies missed thousands of pounds of food or even in some instances, hundreds of pounds of food that come in," Fagerstone said. "By getting this food in, they don't have to go out and purchase it. We don't have to go out and purchase it."

Programs like this help emphasize the importance of these pantry programs, Fagerstone said.

"I think a lot of people forget the fact that your local pantry and even your local food bank, we literally purchased millions of dollars worth of food a year. And if we're able to divert some of that money to another program and not have to go purchase food that helps everybody in the long run," she said.

The donated items and money also go toward other Second Harvest programs.

"The items there will be used in our senior box program and in our Campus Cupboard program," Fagerstone said. "Even though the Campus Cupboard program ends during the summer, we'll use those products to build up our supplies so when school starts, we can immediately get those Campus Cupboard bags out to the students and their families that need them."

For more information on Stamp Out Hunger, visit www.shcfb.org.

Sara Rooney can be reached at sara.rooney@newspressnow.com.