By Jamie Miller
Times are tough for people right now. Corona is kicking our butts, and money is tight. However, some of the hardest hit are Grand Rapids Community College students.
According to a GRCC press release “70 percent of GRCC students attend part time, scheduling classes around home and work responsibility. With many area employers limiting hours or closing their doors in response to the crisis, more students face food and housing insecurity.”
However GRCC and Plainsong Farm are not about to take this lying down and have partnered together to make a difference.
“We’re here to serve our community with good food and learning opportunities,”
stated Nurya Parish, the farms founding executive director, in a press release.
GRCC’s Student Life office has offered curbside food distribution since March.
“We’ve averaged about 60 students a week and all of them have been able to pick up fresh produce,” said Lina Blair, GRCC’s Director of Student Life and Conduct. “Since we started food distribution in March we’ve distributed like 1,177 food packages to over 400 different students”.
When asked what it means to be able to do this Blair simply replied, “It’s significant to us because our students in need of food, and students who are not food secure who are food insecure, deserve to have healthy meals and part of that is having fresh produce.”
