Mott Community College commits to helping students through and after Covid-19 concerns

FLINT, Michigan—Joining in on a $422,000 grant initiative from the Educational Credit Management Corporation Foundation (ECMC) to the Michigan Community College Association, Mott Community College (MCC) is extending housing, food, child care, and transportation support to its students.

It’s a part of their statewide basic needs initiative that started in January and will conclude June 2022. The initiative was created by the ECMC in response to a national April 2019 student ‘#RealCollege’ survey that had troubling results regarding basic needs insecurity.

Out of the 123 colleges surveyed—which included two to four-year colleges across the nation—45 percent of students were food insecure in the past 30 days, 56 percent reported being housing insecure in the previous year, and 17 percent of the respondents were homeless in the previous year.

MCC has continued to face these issues like food insecurity, prior to the outcome of the #REalCollege 2019 survey. Food needs are directly met with the Mott Eats food pantry that opened in October 2018 and has served 1,889 students from November 2019 to February of this year. The food pantry serves under the umbrella of Mott’s Family Life Center that opened in 2019. Since opening, they have already serviced 85 students through housing assistance, legal assistance, counseling, financial assistance, crisis intervention and more. For those that struggle with finding work-appropriate clothing, they can find what they need inside the college’s clothing pantry, Ellen’s Closet.

Now the college faces a new challenge as they, and colleges and universities across the nation, have closed their doors to students amidst the Covid-19 pandemic.

Despite the campus temporarily closing due to Coronavirus concerns, Dawn Hibbard Communications Specialist at MCC, maintains that MCC will continue to address students' basic needs and course work demands.

“We are coordinating with the Foodbank of Eastern Michigan to provide food and have had an offer from the UAW to deliver food if students have transportation issues,” said Hibbard. “We are also providing students with information on free internet from Comcast for 60 days, for those without internet at home, to help facilitate online course delivery.”

For more information contact Hibbard at 810-762-0593 or email [email protected].