Salvation Army provides college survival kits

By TAYLOR BROWN

tbrown@yourmvi.com

A company that recently purchased the coke plant in Monessen is already showing the community that it plans to be a good neighbor. 

Cleveland-Cliffs, a leader in the North American steel industry, purchased ArcelorMittal in September. 

This month, the Cleveland-Cliff Foundation announced it will donate more than $1 million to local food and nonprofit organizations in the communities it serves.

The Salvation Army in Monessen is one of 44 organizations receiving help to fight hunger through a program designed for college and trade school students. 

Capt. Sue Thwaite said the College Survival Kit program launched for a trial run last week and will continue on a monthly basis as long as resources are available.

The kits, geared toward people pursuing higher education or trades, will provide monthly boxes of food and other necessities such as hand sanitizer. 

“This a first for us, but not the first time we thought about helping the college students in our community,” Thwaite said. “I thought about doing something like this a few years ago, but we just never had the funding to pull it off.”

For the past two years, Thwaite has operated a weekly food program for students at Douglas Education Center that helps about 50 students each week, but she knew the need was greater and reached beyond city limits. 

“For college students, a lot of them are not able to sign up for food assistance, or when they do sign up for a food bank they are getting more food than they can use,” Thwaite said. “This program will allow us to give them smaller boxes with the basics and the essentials.”

Boxes will include items such as boxed pasta and sauce, tuna, soup, canned fruit, breakfast bars, cereal, hand soap and hand sanitizer, along with produce and fruit as available. It will also come with a $10 gift card to Foodland. 

“The gift card will help them purchase their meat or other things they might need, and by using Foodland, everything will trickle all the way back around into our local economy,” Thwaite said. “It’s a win-win.”

The Cleveland-Cliff Foundation gave the Salvation Army $10,000 to implement the program, which will help up to 150 students each month. 

During the trial run last week, 24 students received survival kits. 

Distributions will continue at least through the end of this year, Thwaite said. 

“We can continue to grow with this program,” she said. “There has always been a need, but I could not figure out how to address it. Now we can. 

“This donation will start us off and keep us going throughout the end of the year, and hopefully moving into next year we are able to secure more funding or donations to allow this to continue.”

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