Drive fails to fill food closet

DONATIONS: With fewer items collected during this year's Stamp Out Hunger drive, the Newark Food Closet is soliciting donations from the community.

By ERINN CAIN
ecain@messengerpostmedia.com  

NEWARK - When she became a coordinator of the Newark Food Closet five years ago, Mary Jo Fenyn quickly realized just how much the pantry depends on donations. The food supply is kept up through the summer months with the help of the National Association of Letter Carriers' annual Stamp Out Hunger drive that has postal workers accepting donations.

'No one realizes that summertime is the worst time,' she said, noting that families may be in need of more food because school is out. 'Families just need more food. We rely on the postal drive to carry us through.'

Each year, mail carriers put postcards in mailboxes, reminding people of the drive. The following week, carriers return and collect food boxes placed by the mailboxes.

But this year, that didn't happen.

In order to cut back on costs, the U.S. Postal Service decided not to send out postcards this year for the June drive in the Rochester area.

Across the rest of the country, the food drive takes place for one day in May - except for the Rochester area, which holds a week-long drive in June, said Karen Mazurkiewicz, spokesperson for the Western New York district of the U.S. Postal Service. Postcards for the drive in May are purchased by the Campbell's Soup Co. and other corporate sponsors. However, the postal service has paid each year for the postcards to be sent out for the June drive.

'Doing it differently adds costs to promotions, which is the postcards,' said Mazurkiewicz.

While this year, the postal service decided not to pay for the postcards, she added that it does front the labor and other costs that go into collecting the food. But Fenyn said the biggest problem was not that postcards didn't go out, but that the food closet didn't know about the change. 'I was frantic,' she said. 'It was too late to get it in (the newspapers).'

Art Muoio, president of branch 210 of the National Association of Letter Carriers, said by the time they were notified by the postal service's print shop in Buffalo that postcards would not be going out, it was too late to notify the food closets. He said the association, instead, turned to other means, including public-service announcements and notifications in such publications as the Catholic Courier.

'I am very disappointed in the postal service's choice not to take part in this worthy cause that helps thousands of thousands of people,' Muoio said, who estimated that the amount of food collected was down about 65 percent from last year. The Newark Food Closet was one of the pantries that was affected. Last year, it received about 50 boxes of food through the drive. This year, it got 13.

'We did see some substantial decrease in donations this year,' said Rodney Brown, postmaster at the Newark post office. 'I'm not sure if it's because of the lack of postcards or the economy. My guess is it's a bit of both.' The whole thing, Fenyn said, was a misunderstanding - the post office did not know that the food closet was not informed of the change.

'The reason they didn't say anything was they had the understanding that we'd at least advertise in the papers,' she said.

But with the economic recession, more families are relying on the food closet, and it is in even more need of donations, said Fenyn. Last March, for example, the food closet served 48 families; this March the number jumped to 70.

'Luckily we've had some wonderful people donate, and groups donate,' said Fenyn, who mentioned Wegmans, the Newark Rotary Club and the Newark school district. '

top of page

Copyright © 2009
Courier-Gazette, 613 S. Main St. Newark, N.Y. 14513 - 315-331-1000
All Rights Reserved