Feeding the hungry in the local community is as easy as walking to your mailbox.

On Saturday, May 12, the nation’s largest single-day food drive will kick off to benefit Feeding America, the nation’s largest domestic hunger-relief organization. All local residents have to do to participate is to leave a sturdy bag containing non-perishable food such as canned soup, canned vegetables, pasta, rice or cereal next to their mailbox before their regular mail delivery time.

The food will be picked up by a letter carrier and transported to a local Feeding America food bank or hunger-relief organization. All donations stay within the community.

According to a press release:

The National Association of Letter Carriers is joining forces with Campbell Soup Company to Help Stamp Out Hunger across the nation.

“We’re incredibly excited for the 20th anniversary of the Stamp Out Hunger food drive,” said Fredric V. Rolando, NALC president. “We’re asking people across the country for their support to make this year’s drive the most successful in its 20-year history.”

In 2011, Americans donated 70.2 million pounds of food on the single-day drive, which marked the eighth consecutive year that at least 70 million pounds were collected by letter carriers.

The need for food assistance continues to exist in every community in America, no matter how rich or poor. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s annual study measuring food security in the United States, the number of Americans living in food insecure homes reached nearly 49 million in 2011 (the most recent year that such data is available).

For more information about the annual Stamp Out Hunger food drive, visit Help Stamp out hunger or Help Stamp out hunger facebook, and follow the drive at http://twitter.com/#!/StampOutHunger