Westfield residents are encouraged to pack up nonperishable items and participate in the nation’s largest one-day food drive May 11.

Letter carriers in the city will once again participate in the annual National Association of Letter Carriers’ Stamp Out Hunger Food Drive, collecting donations for distribution locally. The drive happens each year on the second Saturday in May.

Greg Gormong, a letter carrier covering Westfield, Carmel, Fishers, Zionsville and a handful of other communities, is heading up the local National Association of Letter Carriers food drive.

“We really want to make a great push for this,” Gormong said. “Talking with food pantries, they say that everything is great during Thanksgiving time. But when it comes around to this time of year, they are a little low on stock. So, that’s why the National Association of Letter Carriers did this, to keep that cycle going.”

This is the 32nd year for the food drive. Residents are encouraged to bag items such as canned chicken and tuna, canned fruits and vegetables, boxed meals, peanut butter, boxed cereals and other nonperishable items and leave them by their mailboxes.

“(The donations) only go to local food pantries,” Gormong said. “We always solicit to residents, and they’ve always been great about it, but in order to make this our best one we’re also soliciting businesses. We’ve reached out to cities like Westfield to help promote the event. The more people see it, the more they might say they want to do something to help out.”

Westfield donations will again be delivered to Open Doors food pantry.

“It’s a great pleasure and honor for us to be a part of this food drive every year, and we much appreciate the work that the postal carriers do to collect all this food for us,” said Open Doors president Bruce Watson. “Our particular pantry here in the last few years has collected over 30,000 pounds of food. That’s a lot of food, and it takes us a couple of months at least to sort through all of that. We touch every single piece of food to check for the date on it, to make sure it’s within date, and if not, it goes to the side. But the majority of it is. This is great honor for us.”

Mayor Scott Willis encouraged the public to consider volunteering with Open Doors in addition to donating through this year’s food drive.

“A lot of people don’t realize that even here in Westfield, we’re very blessed here and a lot of people think we don’t have poverty in Westfield. But we do,” Willis said. “About 7 percent of our population is in poverty. So, we do have people, fellow Shamrocks right here who need your help. Open Doors is doing wonderful things every day for our community.”

On April 22, Willis issued a proclamation marking May 11 as Letter Carriers’ Food Drive Day in Westfield.

Since launching in 1993, the National Association of Letter Carriers’ annual Stamp Out Hunger Food Drive has collected and distributed more than 1.9 billion pounds of food nationwide.

For more, visit opendoorswestfield.org.