The 24th annual Letter Carriers’ Stamp Out Hunger Food Drive is the nation’s largest one-day collection.

The availability of nutritionally adequate and safe food, or the ability to acquire such food, is limited or uncertain for 1 in 6 Americans, many of whom are in households with at least one person working.

The drive is held each year on the second Saturday in May because hunger-relief advocates says food supplies collected during winter holiday drives have dwindled. The drive also comes just before many school systems end their academic years, and that often can mean a suspension in subsidized meals for many students.

Western Connecticut coordinator Dennis Sideropolis says last year, Greater Danbury area residents donated 76,000 pounds of non-perishable food items.

Last year’s drive collected approximately 71 million pounds of non-perishable food that was left in bags next to postal customers’ mailboxes across the country.  It was the 12th consecutive year that letter carriers have collected more than 70 million pounds of food, and it brought the drive’s grand total to more than 1.4 billion pounds of food collected.