Letter carriers in Clark County and across Oregon collected nearly 1.4 million pounds of donated food during the National Association of Letter Carriers Food Drive on May 14. The drive also raised a record $107,000 in cash.
In Clark County, 136,708 pounds of food were collected. Nearly 4,000 urban and rural letter carriers in Clark County, joined letter carriers throughout the nation to collect food donations from postal customers. All the donations will benefit the Oregon Food Bank, which supplies many outlying food banks across the region, including the Clark County Food Bank.
While the NALC Food Drive is the largest single-day food drive in the nation, the 1.4 million pounds collected in Clark County and Oregon this year didn’t match last year’s record of 1.7 million pounds.
Oregon Food Bank CEO Rachel Bristol said high unemployment, rising prices, falling home values and general economic stress “likely contributed to the 18 percent drop in food collected this year. Overall, private food donations to Oregon Food Bank are 25 percent below budget and 12 percent lower than fiscal year 2009-10.”
For more information, visit http://oregonfoodbank.org.
