 Central Lakes college students have access to a variety of resources and opportunities to help them succeed and one of the most valuable resources they have is their own food pantry. Our Taylor Archer has more. For a quick snack between classes or last minute grocery item, Central Lake students have access to their own food pantry available in the Student Life Center. It's called a food pantry and any student can walk in and get food and the food actually goes really fast. We see an average of, I believe, 100 students a week in the food pantry. Twition costs, fee costs, they're all going up so that burden on students is higher than it's ever been so this is kind of just one way where we feel like we're doing something to give back. The CLC food pantry was made possible by Second Harvest Food Bank as well as the Brainerd Lions because they wanted to help students who are already under enough financial pressure from attending college. We got set up to be an agency through Second Harvest and what that means is that every so often about once a month we'll put in an order through them. We'll use the money that we got donated to us from the Lions group and from various other service groups. Like today, for instance, I think we spent about $500 but we got three pallets of food and it was about 2,500 pounds of food. Central Lakes is also trying to incorporate more healthy meal choices into their students' lives every day. The program's called Healthy Food Healthy Students and it's a program I initiated this fall. Each week the students will learn a new meal and then take home the groceries to make that meal at home. And providing access to snacks and groceries has made life a little more manageable for the students. In Brainerd Taylor Archer, Lakeland News. The Staples community also has a food pantry to help out their students in that area. If you've enjoyed this segment of Lakeland News, please consider making a tax deductible contribution to Lakeland Public Television.