New program launches to help students in need at SKYCTC
On Monday morning, students and staff at Southcentral Kentucky Community and Technical College celebrated the grand opening of GROW, which stands for Giving Resources to Others Without.
GROW provides a clothing closet and a food pantry on campus for students who are in need.
Kelly Meredith works at SKYCTC and has worked tirelessly to create this program.
“I work with a program called ‘Ready to Work’ and individuals in that program are often in need of things. There is usually single parents, not always, but their focus is on their children. So, my desire was to help those parents, help themselves and that is what really started this. Then I realized this need was really more widespread on campus than just the participants in my program.” says Meredith.
Meredith was determined to help students in need, but she needed help funding the project.
“We were able to write a grant to the Community Foundation of South Central Kentucky to get the start up funding that we needed to get the clothing racks and the food shelves and all of the things we need to get this off the ground.” says Heather Rogers, the Executive Director of the SKYCTC Foundation.
The clothing closet provides business casual clothing, interview attire, shoes, and coats, for both female and male students in need. The room provides privacy and a fitting room for students.
The food pantry provides snacks, quick breakfast options, lunch items, hygiene products, and canned good that students can take home to their families.
“It’s wonderful! I mean I can not wait to see how well this goes over and hopefully be able to expand it. At this time, we are going to take things to most of our other campuses if students need it, but eventually I’d to see this expand to our other campuses and them have their own GROW sites.” adds Meredith.
If you want to help, the GROW clothing closet and food pantry is accepting monetary donations.
Here is how you can donate:
Contact the SKYCTC Foundation at 210-901-1186
