FLAT ROCK, Mich. (WXYZ) — Students at Flat Rock Community Schools are organizing a food drive to help families facing food insecurity as uncertainty around SNAP benefits continues to grow.
Watch Carli Petrus's video report:
The student-run initiative partners with the non-profit Helping Hands of Community Lutheran Church to collect canned and boxed food items for families in need throughout the community.
"It's hard to raise your kids or come to school when you don't know when your next meal is," said Drew Wilde, principal of Flat Rock Community High School.
Wilde said the need has never been greater, as concerns about SNAP benefits persist.
"If they don't have their benefits, you know, they're only going to get a portion of them, then that means that families are going to have to make some very serious sacrifices, and if we're able to alleviate some of that for them, that's what we'll do as a community," Wilde said.
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Students have turned the food drive into a friendly competition between schools. Bobcean Elementary and the high school have teamed up as "Team Evergreen," while the middle school and Barnes Elementary form "Team Meadows."
"What we're doing is we're actually pairing the schools up as teams, so we're having Bobcean Elementary and the high school team up as 'Team Evergreen', and then we're head-to-head with 'Team Meadows', which is the middle school and Barnes Elementary. We're going to see who can raise the most food for our community," said 12th grader Megan, a student organizer.
Fifth-grader Trevor, a student council member on Team Meadows, created posters with classmates to encourage donations.
"I'm a student council member and I made a poster about this with my other classmate to encourage people to donate," Trevor said.
For 12th-grader Alexia on Team Evergreen, the cause hits close to home through a friend's experience.
"She was talking about how she was struggling, her family was struggling personally because they can't afford food, and how this food drive is potentially going to help them to put food on the table. They have a large family; they have more than just two of them; they need food," Alexia said.
Alexia explained that many families face uncertainty about their food supply, especially during the holiday season.
"They don't know when the end of their food supply may come so some people may have SNAP benefits, still left and those might just go away like they might just run out of them or they might have money right now but because of the holiday season, because of Thanksgiving, they might not have money to afford food later on and that's what this food drive is mainly for," Alexia said.
The food drive runs through November 14. Community members can drop off non-perishable food items at the schools' main offices.
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