To the editor:

The National Association of Letter Carriers, in partnership with the United States Postal Service and the National Association of Rural Letter Carriers, would like to ask you to help us Stamp Out Hunger. This is the largest single-day food drive in the United States and it will be on Saturday, May 13 this year. This is our 25th year of our annual food drive. Please help us make it our best year yet. We had an amazing year last year, with more than 9,013 pounds of food collected and taken directly to the Green County Food Pantry, right here in Monroe.

This is a critical time of year for the food insecure. School food programs that ensure that children are adequately fed during the school year are not available in the summer months. One in five families are food insecure in the United States, and one in every four of the food insecure are children, which is a very startling statistic. That works out to over 16 million children in the United States that go to bed hungry. It also greatly affects seniors on a fixed income. Seniors are the fasted growing population of people visiting food pantries. While other expenses continue to rise, some retired people are forced to chose between paying their light bill to keep the electricity on, and going to the grocery store. These people are in our community. Let's do everything we can to help them.

The week of the food drive, a postcard will be delivered in your mail, as a reminder, and then a few days later a blue plastic bag will be delivered with your mail. You can help by placing non-perishable food items in the blue bags provided by your mailbox on May 13, and your letter carrier will make sure that it is all donated directly to the Green County Food Pantry.

Please help us Stamp Out Hunger on Saturday May 13. Thank you.