Postal workers: Fill up your mailbox with food

COEUR d'ALENE - If a grocery bag is in your mailbox this week, don't throw it away.

Instead, fill it with groceries and set it at the mailbox on Saturday to participate in the national postal food drive.

"The postal food drive is our biggest food drive of the year," said Carolyn Shewfelt, food bank program manager for the Community Action Partnership. "And right now our pantry is looking pretty scary."

Shewfelt said the CAP had to curtail its food box program before the food drive because of low supplies. This time of the year is pretty slow when it comes to food donations, she added.

Shewfelt said last year's postal food drive generated less than half the amount of food that is normally collected, and organizers are doing everything they can to raise awareness of the upcoming event.

She said the first year she started at CAP, the postal drive brought in more than 30,000 pounds of donated food. Last year it only collected about a third of that.

This year she wants to change that.

"Every carrier will be delivering postcards announcing the food drive this week," said Sue Hill, a rural carrier for the U.S. Postal Service.

Hill said Super 1 Foods also donated grocery bags that will be delivered this year to help with the collection.

"Part of the problem last year was the elections," Hill said, adding carriers were delivering post cards at the same time candidates were mailing literature for the May primary election.

"I think a lot of people round-filed those postcards along with the campaign postcards," Shewfelt said, adding they didn't have grocery bags either.

This year Shewfelt and Hill hope people will set the grocery bags on their kitchen counters to remind them of the drive on Saturday.

"Maybe they will remind people to give," Hill said. "Even just a can or two from every home would help so much. You'd be surprised how that adds up."

Hill said if your donation is too big to put in your mailbox, just set it on the ground under the mailbox and the carriers will collect it.

She realizes that not everyone has the ability to donate, but she hopes the bags and postcards will remind those who are capable of giving.

"I know sometimes people just get busy and forget to do it," she said, adding there will be donor bins in Hayden and Coeur d'Alene at Super 1 Foods and Albertsons just in case people forget, or plan to be out of town on Saturday.

Shewfelt said an easy way to remember the date is that the national postal drive always falls on the Saturday before Mother's Day.

Shewfelt said it is also a good time for gardeners to remember the food banks also accept fresh produce. The community Action Partnership encourages all gardeners to plant an extra row of vegetables to donate to the food bank.

Most of the produce donated by the grocers is great, she said but the shelf life has diminished, so fresh fruits and vegetables during the summer months always helps.

Shewfelt said the postal service deserves a lot of credit for taking time to help generate such a windfall for the area food banks.

"This is a complete reroute of their entire day," she said. "This adds a lot of work for them, and they don't get paid for anything."

Hill said it is gratifying for many of the carriers.

"It just makes us feel so good to pull up to a mailbox and find a bag of food," Hill said. "In years past, I have gone hungry. I didn't go to the food bank, but I know what it feels like to be hungry and nobody should have to feel that way.

"I hope this is the largest food drive we've ever had."