Stamp Out Hunger was an overwhelming success in Grand Rapids with more than 108,000 pounds of food collected by letter carriers. It nearly doubled last year’s food collection.
WGVU takes a look at the impact for families in need.
Stamp Out Hunger collected 71 million pounds of food last year nationally. In Grand Rapids the donations totaled 60,000 pounds. But this year, last Saturday over the span of a few hours, it surged to 108,000 pounds collected by local U.S. letter carriers.
“Roughly speaking there are about 200,000 residences in the City of Grand Rapids and so that’s over half of them donating a pound of food.”
That’s Andrew Steiner from Feed America West Michigan.
“It’s a huge difference. On food drive week it varies year to year but it’s really like adding to or three extra days to our activities here at the food bank. So, that makes an enormous difference when you’re talking about feeding people in 40 counties. When you talk about the fact that one in eight people in our region is food insecure this makes a big dent. And this is food that people are going to be excited to receive. We saw things like whole grain pasta, rice, peanut butter, cereals, so these are all foods that our clients are going to be really thrilled to be able to use.”
Nutritious foods are what Steiner says Feeding America most appreciates. It’s also thankful for Meijer who sponsored the event mailing out brown paper collection bags. Feeding America believes those bags served as a reminder and a resource for making this year’s Stamp Out Hunger Food Drive a success.
