Community can help food bank Stamp Out Hunger

Jerry Brown

Submitted photo

We have all been through so much in the past few years. But what has stayed strong is the compassion we have for our fellow neighbors and the desire to lend a helping hand. Please remember Stamp Out Hunger on May 10 and, when you see them on their daily routes, thank your letter carrier for all their hard work that day.”

The number of families who have turned to St. Mary’s Food Bank for help has steadily risen along with inflation numbers that have gone from an imposition to an over-the-edge emergency in the past two years.

Nowhere have the numbers been as stark as in the Phoenix/West Valley area.

Just three years ago, the number of seniors and families seeking food assistance from St. Mary’s facility in Surprise was less than 200 per day. Now routinely, 700-plus families visit our food bank each weekday, pushing the food bank’s ability to help each one to its limits and forcing St. Mary’s to purchase more and more to meet that need.

Many of families we see each month are coming to Sr. Mary’s for the first time. The stories are the same. Households living on the edge. Seniors on fixing incomes struggling to get by. The rising price of food and medicine forcing a choice no one should make: Which one do I go without?

Neighbors who have donated to the food bank or volunteered packing St. Mary’s boxes in the past are now on the other side of the line. It’s something they never thought would happen, a humbling, difficult day.

St. Mary’s, St. Vincent de Paul, United, Desert Mission and other food banks throughout the Valley and across Arizona are working hard to say “Yes” to everyone new family who suddenly needs help.

On Saturday, May 10, every family in Arizona can help a family without leaving their driveway.

For the past 33 years across America, U.S. Postal Service letter carriers have used the second Saturday in May to give back: Using their mail trucks to conduct the largest single-day food drive in the world.

Participating in Stamp Out Hunger 2025 couldn’t be easier. Please leave a bag of nonperishable food at your mailbox before your mail arrives. Your letter carrier will do the rest, taking the food back to the post office where USPS and food bank volunteers will be waiting. The thank you card left behind lets you know your food is on the way to a family in need.

We are distributing more food, purchasing more food (due to decreasing donations from both public and government sources) and, like everyone else, paying a lot more for that food than ever before.

St. Mary’s distributes 300,000 meals a day. More than 100,000 emergency family and senior food boxes and kids backpacks go out each month. And with summer on the way, kids who receive free and reduced breakfast and lunch in school are home for two extra meals, adding to costs for moms and dads the same time their utility bills skyrocket.

Your role is so simple, yet so important.

You may see a reminder card and a plastic bag in your mailbox this week. You can use that bag for your donation if you wish, but any bag will do. What a wonderful time to clean out your pantry for the spring!

Last year, St. Mary’s received 200,000 pounds of food from Stamp Out Hunger. Across the state, more than 1 million pounds of donations were collected.

We have all been through so much in the past few years. But what has stayed strong is the compassion we have for our fellow neighbors and the desire to lend a helping hand. Please remember Stamp Out Hunger on May 10 and, when you see them on their daily routes, thank your letter carrier for all their hard work that day.

Editor’s note: Jerry Brown is director of public relations for St. Mary’s Food Bank. Please send your comments to AzOpinions@iniusa.org. We are committed to publishing a wide variety of reader opinions, as long as they meet our Civility Guidelines.