May is not generally a time of year when people think to donate to the Clark County Food Bank. In fact, that’s the point behind the Stamp Out Hunger Food Drive happening Saturday.
This is a “strategic time of year” to donate to the food bank because donations from the holiday season are long gone, said Matt Edmonds, communications manager at the food bank. Also, children will soon be out of school for the summer, unable to make use of the federal free- and reduced-price lunch program.
Stamp Out Hunger makes filling the food bank’s shelves easy. Place a bag of nonperishable food next to your mailbox by 9 a.m. Saturday and your neighborhood letter carrier will pick it up during their normal mail route. The letter carriers will take whatever pantry staples people are willing to donate. Proteins, such as canned tuna and chicken, peanut butter and beans, are particularly in demand.
Organizer Don Young said people shouldn’t fret if carriers and volunteers accidentally skip over their bags on Saturday. They will simply be picked up later in the week. People may also bring donations to the nearest post office.
Stamp Out Hunger is a national food drive in its 26th year, organized by the National Letter Carriers Association. It’s the second largest single-day food drive in Clark County behind Walk & Knock, which saw a dramatic increase in the amount of food donated during its December drive.
“We are hoping that’s an upward trend in our community this year and in years to come,” Edmonds said.
Young said 125,535 pounds of food were collected last year, an increase from the year prior.
“My goal is always 200,000 pounds,” he said.
Young, who was a letter carrier for 43 years, became involved with the first Stamp Out Hunger food drive in the ’90s. Over the last several years, he’s experimented with ways to get more people to donate food. This year, they started putting reminder cards in P.O. boxes to engage people and businesses without regular mailboxes. Also, Amboy’s post office is participating for the first time. Most but not all post offices in Clark County are involved in the drive. There’s a friendly competition between the Camas and Washougal post offices and between Vancouver’s central and east side post offices.
Last year, 112,553 people in the county accessed food assistance — a bit less than a fourth of the population. The food bank received just less than 7 million pounds of food, most from grocery stores, the Oregon Food Bank, the USDA and companies such as United Natural Foods. About a half-million pounds came from food drives such as Stamp Out Hunger.
That food gets distributed throughout 40 different sites in Clark County.
