QUENTIN ROUX / Staff

Marco Island Post Office carrier/supervisor Brenda Treadwll displays some of the promotional material drawing attention to Saturday's letter carriers food drive.

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People might just be mistaken if they think that hunger in Marco Island’s backyard is a myth.

Ask 40 local agencies, such as soup kitchens and pantries, shelters and nurseries, and they’ll confirm that hundreds of Collier County residents simply don’t have enough to eat.

At the same time, compassion for the less fortunate is widespread, and at this time of the year it’s the Marco Island Post Office that springs into gear to do something about the issue.

Tomorrow (Saturday) is the culmination of the National Association of Letter Carriers Annual Food Drive, which encourages people to donate non-perishable foods for local distribution to the needy.

Carrier and supervisor for the Marco branch, Brenda Treadwell, said collections of items such as canned tuna, vegetables and rice has been going on for the past few weeks.

Full- and part-time Marco Islanders, she said, are traditionally generous, with about 6,500 pounds of non-perishable food having been donated so far this year.

That’s still a far cry from the more than 34,000 pounds collected last year, but the majority of donations come in on the designated Saturday, Treadwell said.

To remind people of the food drive, carriers have been dropping off Publix-donated bags at mailboxes, she said.

They should be filled and left at mailboxes for collection on Saturday, otherwise people are welcome to drop them off directly at the Post Office before Saturday, she said.

In charge of distribution is Collier Harvest, which has partnered with the Post Office for the past 16 years.

It is also a nationwide initiative, and is said to be the largest one-day food drive in the world.

Treadwell added that while donors mean well, they sometimes include previously opened foods.

That food is discarded for obvious reasons, Treadwell said.