Stamp Out Hunger Food Drive Brings in More Than 214,000 Pounds of Food in Just One Day

COLUMBIA, SC – May 16, 2012 – Harvest Hope Food Bank wishes toexpress their enormous thanks and appreciation to everyone whocontributed to make the Stamp Out Hunger food drive on Saturday, May 12an overwhelming success, providing Harvest Hope with over 214,582 poundsof food collected in just one day, more than 58,000 pounds more thanlast year! 

Donated food continued to come in to Harvest Hope from rural postoffices throughout late Tuesday, May 15. Letter carriers across HarvestHope’s 20 county service area worked throughout the day on Saturday, May12 to pick up food left by postal customers at their mail boxes andreturned the donated food to post offices, where Harvest Hope staff andvolunteers transferred the food from postal vehicles to Harvest Hopetrucks.

By early in the day on Saturday it became evident communities across20 counties had opened their hearts and pantries as enormous levels offood began to arrive. Collected food for Harvest Hope’s three branches: 

                    2012                        

Midlands    100,039                       
Pee Dee       22,054                                                                   Upstate        92,489                                                                   Total              214,582                                                                 

This equates to 130,050 meals for the Midlands, 28,670 meals for thePee Dee, 120,235 meals for the Upstate, or a total of 278,956 meals forHarvest Hope’s 20 county service area. 

“Everyone really came together to make this year’s Stamp Out Hungerdrive a complete success and we are overwhelmed by the generosity andthe amount of food collected,” said Harvest Hope CEO Denise Holland.

“We want to thank everyone who answered the call and put food attheir mail boxes, all the letter carriers who took on the added duty ofpicking up all this food on their routes and working so hard to bring itin safely and all the volunteers who dedicated their free time toworking at all those post office loading docks helping unload the food.This will be an enormous boost to start the summer and make sure we canhelp families who see an increased need because their children will bewithout school lunches for the next three months.”