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An Anniversary to Collect: Letter Carriers’ Charitable Event Gets Commemorative Stamp Set

With the help of the event’s longtime mascots—whom you might recognize from the comics page—the National Association of Letter Carriers’ annual Stamp Out Hunger event is getting its own personalized stamp set to signify its 25th anniversary.

The National Association of Letter Carriers is celebrating the 25th anniversary of its most noted philanthropic campaign the best way it knows how: through the use of postage.

NALC’s Stamp Out Hunger Food Drive, which began in May 1993 after a 1991 pilot program, coordinates the efforts of letter carriers around the country to gather food and other forms of aid for those in need. The program has continued to grow from there, last year collecting 80 million pounds of food, delivered to local food banks around the country.

With the anniversary fast approaching, the American Philatelic Society, which represents stamp collectors nationwide, is working with NALC to reflect on that quarter-century of work with a series of new commemorative postage stamps featuring the event’s longtime mascots, the characters from The Family Circus.

The new stamps, with artwork from Family Circus cartoonists Bil and Jeff Keane, were created with the help of the personalized PhotoStamps service. (This might be a surprise for people who aren’t stamp nerds, but you can buy personalized stamps.)

Jeff Keane, along with officials from NALC, will be on hand at the AmeriStamp Expo, taking place March 3-5 in Reno, Nevada, to release the souvenir set out into the world. (Bil Keane, who originated the famed strip in 1960, died in 2011.)

For those who can’t make it to the event, the stamps will also be made available through the official Stamp Out Hunger online store—which is brand-new this year. This year’s Stamp Out Hunger Food Drive, by the way, takes place May 13.

(Handout photo)

Ernie Smith

By Ernie Smith

Ernie Smith is a former senior editor for Associations Now. MORE

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