Pomeroy Mayor Jackie Welker signs a proclamation designating Saturday as National Food Collection Day as Heather Cleland, officer in charge, and Jim Pullins, carrier, look on.

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POMEROY — Again this year the Pomeroy mail carriers will be participating in the National Association of Letter Carriers annual drive to “Stamp Out Hunger.”

Saturday they be collecting food items to be donated to the Meigs Community Parish who will handle the distribution to families in the county who are experiencing a shortage of money with which to buy food.Last year the mail carriers collected and delivered to the parish 1,871 pounds of food.

This is the 21st anniversary of the national one-day drive to collect food to alleviate hunger. Last year across the nation 70 million pounds of food were collected. Nationally the grand total from over two decades has been 1.2 billion pounds.

Residents are asked to contribute non-perishable food items like canned meats and fish, canned soup, juice, pasta, vegetables, cereal and rice to the fund drive. Donations which are not to include anything in glass containers, are to be placed in a sack near the mailbox for pickup by the carriers around their scheduled delivery time on Saturday. For those who miss the pickup at their homes, bags of food may be taken to the post office.

Last week Pomeroy Mayor Jackie Welker signed a proclamation designating Saturday, May 11, as National Food Collection Day.

He encourages the public to support the program which has as its goal to “Stamp Our Hunger.”