Butler County Community College raised $5,145 during a week of charitable giving that will be used to provide free holiday meals to Pioneer Pantry patrons, administered in boxes decorated with paper hearts painted by 3- to 5-year-olds.

Nearly 60 people donated to the BC3 Education Foundation during the week of charitable giving at the beginning of September, raising money for the college to create Thanksgiving and December holiday meals for BC3 community members experiencing food insecurity.

BC3 in late summer was among the first institutions of higher education in Pennsylvania to be designated as a Hunger-Free Campus by the state Department of Education.

This fall will be the fourth consecutive in which the college has provided free Thanksgiving and December holiday meals to BC3 Pioneer Pantry patrons.

The meals show that “we want you to thrive,” said Karen Jack, BC3’s project director of a KEYS program whose low-income students receive Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits.

“We care about you as a student, as a person, as a member of the BC3 campus community.”

On Tuesday, members of the college’s food security team that Jack leads, as well as others, will assemble about 40 Thanksgiving meal boxes to be distributed to BC3 Pioneer Pantry patrons who have registered to receive the holiday fare, she said.

Meals will be distributed from 12 p.m. to 4 p.m. Wednesday and Thursday at the BC3 Pioneer Pantry in the arts and hospitality building on the college’s main campus in Butler Township.

Boxes will include a turkey, potatoes, milk, eggs, butter, cranberry sauce, pie, stuffing, assorted apples, white onions, carrots and varieties of squash.

“This year we are trying to do mostly fresh food,” Jack said.

Patrons will also receive potato mashers, can openers and a $10 gift card for use at a national store, Jack said.

Community organizations that supported the week of charitable giving include the Butler Rotary Foundation, the Butler AM Rotary Charities, NexTier Bank and Thoma Meat Market, said Mikayla Moretti, a BC3 food security team member and director of special events with the BC3 Education Foundation.

Nearly two dozen preschoolers attending the college’s Amy Wise Children’s Creative Learning Center painted hearts during the first week of November. These will be affixed to the Thanksgiving meal boxes, said Gina Rajchel, the center’s director.

“We also took the children down to the pantry to show them what the pantry was,” Rajchel said. “A lot of them said, ‘It looks like a little grocery store.’ And that’s how we started talking about how people come in the pantry to shop, but they don’t have to use money. And if they don’t have enough money to buy food at the grocery store, they can go to the pantry and get food.”

The hearts are glued near a message that reads: “From our hearts to yours … Happy Thanksgiving!”

“This gives the children an understanding that they are doing something for somebody else and helping others,” Jack said.

Nearly half of community college students in Pennsylvania are considered to be of very low-income, coming from families earning less than $30,000 annually, according to the Pennsylvania Commission for Community Colleges in March.

BC3’s creation of the Pioneer Pantry in 2019 followed a 2018 Wisconsin HOPE Lab survey in which 38 percent of the 304 BC3 students who responded to the survey indicated having low or very low food security.

Food security means ”access by all people at all times to enough food for an active, healthy life,” according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The Pioneer Pantry served 644 BC3 credit and noncredit students and their families, or BC3 employees and their families, in 2021-22. Its patronage has increased 89 percent in three years.

Jennifer Taylor, coordinator of BC3’s hospitality program and a member of the college’s food security team, has seen the reaction of the people who visit the BC3 Pioneer Pantry and receive Thanksgiving and December holiday meals.

“Sometimes it’s just the look on their face,” she said. “The gratefulness that you see. The smile that comes across when they realize they are going to have something different.”

A Hunger-Free Campus designation by the state Department of Education qualifies institutions to seek related grants to enhance food pantries, increase SNAP outreach, improve data gathering and participate in other initiatives that help meet the nutritional needs of students.

BC3’s Pioneer Pantry will offer December holiday meal boxes next month that will include a ham instead of a turkey, Jack said.