The Montevallo Post Office mail carriers are joining other carriers in Shelby County in the

May 12 Stamp Out Hunger food drive, sponsored by the United States Postal Service and the Campbell Soup Company.

This is the 15th-annual drive and the nation&8217;s largest single-day food drive.

Last year, 70.5 million pounds of food was collected along postal routes in the U.S.

Mail carrier Gregg Watts is organizing Montevallo&8217;s efforts this year. He said, &8220;This is the first year we have participated, and we want to make it a huge success. The Montevallo Post Office has 10 mail carriers, and we make more than 5,000 deliveries. Together we can make a real contribution to this drive.&8221;

The food collected along the Montevallo postal routes will go to Shelby Emergency Assistance for distribution.

Information published on the Web site, www.helpstampouthunger.com, reveals that currently in the U.S. seven million people require food assistance in any given week. One in four people in soup kitchen lines is a child.

35 million people are at risk of hunger and 96 billion pounds of food are thrown out every year by the food service industry.

Local citizens are urged to carefully consider these facts and participate in the food drive. On Saturday, May 12, place bags filled with nonperishable food next to your mailbox.

Your mail carrier will pick them up and deliver them to the local food bank.

Ideal items to donate would be canned meat, vegetables, milk or soup.

Other good offerings might be pasta, cereal, rice, dried beans or peas and staples such as sugar, flour and cornmeal.

On the Web site named above, there is additional information.

There is also a flyer that may be downloaded and sent to recipients on individual e-mail lists.

Catherine Legg may be reached via e-mail at mailto:clegg2@bellsouth.net