Valerie Painter, left, coordinator for the Black Hawk College Community Education Center and Etta LaFlora, Stark County youth advisor, work to keep the shelves full at the campus food pantry. [Photo by Susan DeVilder]
Students at the Black Hawk Community Education Center now have access to a campus food pantry, thanks to the CEC Coordinator Valerie Painter.
Painter, who joined the CEC in December, started the food pantry after a trip she took with 15 students to the BHE campus pantry. BHE has a drive-up pantry for students in need.
“We overwhelmed them,” Painter said.
Because she had other students in mind who needed food assistance, Painter decided to start a pantry at the community education center in Kewanee. After getting approval to start the project, she reached out to Wendy Bach with the Quad Cities Campus. Bach runs a food pantry there, and she put Painter in touch with the River Bend Food Bank. Painter was able to sign on to the food bank and she can now place orders for what she needs. That food is then brought on a truck twice a month.
She estimates that the CEC food pantry provides food for about 40 students, including ESL, GED, CNA, phlebotomy, food and protection, and genealogy workshop students.
“There is a need,” she said. “We serve adults in the community,” many of whom have children, work jobs and go to school. Painter called them the “heart of the community” and said that quite a few of her students lack the transportation and the time to get to the local food pantry.
Bringing the food pantry to the Community Education Center has created a sense of community among the faculty and students, she said.
“Students are printing off recipes and sharing them with each other. There’s a lot of hands that have been helping. It’s a great environment.”
Volunteers from AmeriCorps and Project Now, Kathy Albert, the executive director of the KEDC, Stark County Youth Advisor Etta LaFlora, volunteers from the National Asian Pacific Center on Aging, and the students all pitch in to keep the pantry going, she said.
