Hearty thanks to all with postal carriers’ food drive

The St. Joseph Food Pantry is deeply grateful to the very generous residents of Manatee County who donated over 75,000 pounds of food during the May 13 National Association of Letter Carriers Postal Drive.

Our food pantry received food from five area post offices: Braden River, downtown, Lakewood Ranch, Palma Sola and 57th Street. We appreciate the efforts of the letter carriers in picking up this food on their routes, and also the letter carriers who volunteered on their day off to drive trucks to gather food from the daily carriers. We also had 15 food pantry drivers who made runs to the post offices.

As the food was delivered to the food pantry, we had over 250 volunteers to open and sort the food. It was a very long, but rewarding day. The St. Joseph Food Pantry provided supplemental groceries to almost 23,000 families in 2016. The pantry is averaging 1,800 families per month so far in 2017.

Although this year’s postal drive delivered 13,000 fewer pounds than in 2016, our shelves are full again. These donations will help us get through the summer months in our mission to feed anyone in Manatee County who comes to us needing some extra food to make ends meet.

Our sincere thanks to the letter carriers, the donors on the postal routes, the faithful volunteers and to everyone who donated food to feed those volunteers.

This story was originally published May 19, 2017 at 3:46 PM with the headline "Hearty thanks to all with postal carriers’ food drive."