By LINDA CHION
linda@observernews.net
What began in 1993 as a one-day effort, driven by letter carriers has become the nation’s largest single-day food drive, collecting tens of millions of pounds annually for food banks and hunger relief organizations addressing food insecurity.
Expected donations for the 2026 Stamp Out Hunger Food Drive, set to top 80,000 pounds.Caption
Officials say the mission this year is increasingly urgent, as rising grocery prices, persistent poverty and widening gaps in food access leave record numbers of Americans relying on food aid.
“Stamp Out Hunger is the single largest community food drive that we participate in every year,” said Steven McKinnon, development manager for the Emergency Care Help Organization (ECHO), with food banks, clothes closets and resource centers in Brandon and Riverview. “Although the economic pressures of the day are putting strains on everybody, we’re just keeping our fingers crossed that everybody who can, shows up to help.”
“Showing up” for this year’s 33rd annual drive, May 9, includes buying, collecting, bagging and leaving at individual mail boxes non-perishable food for donations. Also needed are people volunteering their time to help load and unload trucks at postal offices and at food banks and pantries, including the ECHO
Riverview resource center at 10509 Riverview Drive.
Letter carriers donating extra time to pick up and deliver donations, that’s the heart of the whole operation, said Vinnie Sombrotto, a lacrosse great from Long Island, N.Y., whose father, Vincent R. Sombrotto, was a letter carrier at Grand Central Station in New York City, and the 16th president of the National Association of Letter Carriers (NALC), between 1978 and 2002.
“In my father’s eyes, union members were the boots on the ground,” Sombrotto said.
“They were like the army, enlisted to go out there and collect and deliver that food, because they had to go door to door anyway. This was the way for letter carriers to give back, and they did it gladly.”
According to reports, the Stamp Out Hunger Food Drive was developed by the NALC in partnership with the U.S. Postal Service, evolving from earlier local pilot efforts before its nationwide launch in 1993. Sombrotto as union president supported the expansion of the program and its use of letter carriers’ regular delivery routes to efficiently collect food donations.
“I’ve always heard that the letter carriers look forward to the drive because they know they’re making a difference for people in need,” Vinnie Sombrotto said.
“The nicest people, they always know that there are people who have a lot less than them. Somehow, despite their own pressures, they find a way to donate something to help people who are less fortunate.”
More than ever, that largesse is needed, McKinnon said, noting the record ECHO is set to break this fiscal year, which ends June 30. “We’re trending right now to serve 34,000 neighbors this year, with emergency food and clothing, back-to-work services and resource negotiations to help keep people in their homes,” McKinnon said. ECHO last year served roughly 30,000 people.
The need is deepening, thanks to dramatic decreases in federal support for food, health and other social services, Sombrotto said. At the same time, McKinnon added, “Food prices, housing prices, gas prices, fuel and energy bills, you name it, continue to rise, making for an extremely tough year.
With “so many rough things going on, there is no silver lining anywhere,” McKinnon said, “save for the community support that lifts organizations like ECHO and the Stamp Out Hunger Food Drive.”
ECHO volunteers are needed to help unload postal trucks, and to load ECHO delivery trucks, at eight postal stations (Riverview, Gibsonton, Ruskin/Apollo Beach, Sun City Center, Palm River, Brandon, Seffner and Valrico). Likewise, volunteers are needed at the Riverview and Brandon ECHO resource centers to sort food for identification and storage, and especially so in the afternoon hours. Folks with pickup trucks and trailers also are in demand.
For more, visit www.echofl.org/ or call ECHO Riverview at 813-540-9880.