Food pantry provides support for Durham Tech students

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Tuesday, September 29, 2015

DURHAM (WTVD) -- College students and their parents will tell you about the rising cost of a higher education. That burden can be especially hard on those who attend community colleges, which have been long considered a reasonably priced option.

At Durham Technical Community College, officials learned there are many students who've found themselves faced with a difficult choice: Feed themselves and their families or pay for school by cutting back on their food budgets.

"These students are skipping meals; possibly skipping meals regularly," said Erin Riney, Durham Tech's Director of College and Community Service.

"They work so hard, overcome such big obstacles to be here. You just want to give them an extra leg up to make sure they're successful."

Riney said she learned about the challenges faced by those students during the 2012 Martin Luther King Jr. Day of Service.

"Our student senate decided to give out food bags and they were gone within 15 minutes," she said. "That made us all pause and realize something big was going on here."

That led to the establishment of the school's first food pantry in 2013, located inside a tiny room adjacent to a television production facility.

As word spread, the pantry outgrew that space.

Today, with help from the Food Shuttle and Food Lion, that television studio converted to an expanded pantry stocked with hundreds of cans, boxes, jars, and bags of nutrition which are all free for hungry students.

Durham Tech's Middle College student Miracle Spruill heard about the food pantry from a friend.

"I was like, how much does it cost? And she goes, 'It doesn't cost anything,'" said Spruill. "And I was like, no more days when your stomach growls and everybody hears it. It's really embarrassing."