When it was time for a Southern Wayne High School student organization to do a spring community service project, it chose to help other students.
The high school’s Family, Career and Community Leaders of America (FCCLA) chapter collected food and paper goods for Wayne Community College’s NOW (No One Without) Food Pantry.
The pantry serves students from across the college’s programs, providing daily meals and “two-day supply” bags of food.
The FCCLA chapter’s Lead Advisor, Lanika Case, teaches Foods I and Foods II at the high school and she talks about food insecurity in her classes.
She knew about the WCC pantry because she is also a ServSafe instructor in the college’s Workforce Continuing Education Division. She shared with the FCCLA members that the college was holding a “Pack the Pantry” drive to keep the shelves stocked.
Ms. Case said the members chose to the college’s pantry for its project because the students understood the need and wanted to support their community. The 30 members all brought in items and filled four boxes.
“We’re very appreciative of this,” said WCC Student Activities Director Paige Ham as she surveyed the variety of food items, beverages, and paper goods. Ms. Ham’s department is responsible for the pantry.
WCC’s pantry is one of more than 650 food pantries on college campuses across the nation. A 2017 national study by the Wisconsin Hope Lab found that at least 42 percent of surveyed community college students were food insecure. Those students reduced the size of meals or skipped them in order to pay for other needs, especially those associated with their education.
The SWHS chapter is an affiliate of both the state and national FCCLA organizations.
Family, Career and Community Leaders of America is a dynamic and effective national student organization that helps young men and women become leaders and address important personal, family, work, and societal issues through Family and Consumer Sciences education, or as determined by the state department of education. FCCLA has more than 150,000 members and over 5,300 chapters from 48 state associations, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands. The organization has involved more than 10 million youth since its founding in 1945.
Wayne Community College is a public, learning-centered institution with an open-door admission policy located in Goldsboro, N.C. As it works to develop a highly skilled and competitive workforce, the college serves 12,000 individuals annually as well as businesses, industry, and community organizations with high quality, affordable, accessible learning opportunities, including more than 70 college credit programs. WCC’s mission is to meet the educational, training, and cultural needs of the communities it serves.