GREEN BAY (NBC 26) — At Northeast Wisconsin Technical College in Green Bay, administrators estimate that more than a third of students struggle to get enough food to eat. But there is a resource on campus to help, and the demographic the tech school is catering to might be surprising.
At NWTC the average age of a student is about 25 years old, and many have families and full-time jobs on top of their college workload.
"I think people still think that most of our students are 18-years-old coming right out of high school and going to school, and that's not the case," says Elyisha Fye, a Student Support Specialist at NWTC.
Fye says that's why the school's food pantry is so vital right now. Allowing non-traditional students to further their education and have food on the table.
"Our bags contain what we would consider a day's worth of food. So breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks."
But the need for food assistance, during the pandemic, in particular, can't be met here alone for students.
"The increase in need is apparent, just not through our numbers. We see the increase in need through our community partnerships," says Fye.
That's why Paul's Pantry has teamed up with NWTC. And they're noticing the same demographic of participants, young adults, who are trying to make ends meet for their families.
"The students from NWTC that we're meeting with are the non-traditional students," says Jenna Robbins of Paul's Pantry.
Robbins has helped foster the relationship between the school's pantry and Paul's Pantry to make sure that the growing need for food assistance, for young adults, in particular, is met.
"Working families, single parents that are working and going to school, and still can't make ends meet," adds Robbins.
Through this budding relationship, the two entities are meeting a need in northeast Wisconsin to make sure that students and their growing families have a resource available to them that many didn't even know they qualified for.
"A lot of people view a pantry as a people that are homeless or without work, and that's really not who we see on a daily basis," says Robbins.
For food pantry resources in the Brown County area check out this link.
