During the Nov. 20 meeting of the Navajo County Community College District Governing Board, Student Government Association (SGA) President Jerrica Flake addressed the board on events taking place.

One of those events is a canned food drive with donation boxes at every campus and center. The drive will end on Friday, Dec. 7.

“We are looking at two options for the donations we receive,” said Flake. The first one was an idea suggested at the conference, which was to create a food pantry for the students at all NPC locations. “If we do this, we will run constant can food drives to keep it stocked. The students could get the food they need. It would be for any student that needs food,” continued Flake.

The problem SGA is facing with this idea is finding a place to store the food and then make it available for distribution. The second option is to give the food to local charitable organizations.

Board Member James Matteson said, “The idea of having availability of food for the students should be supported and pushed hard. There are a lot of people going to school that don’t have a way to have food.”

An SGA fundraiser for Operation Underground Railroad, an organization that fights against child trafficking throughout the world, netted $220, in spite of the cold weather that put a damper on the corn-hole tournament and raffle.

The officers of the SGA along with their advisor recently travelled to Chicago in October to attend the American Student Government Association Conference. “We got to meet hundreds of other kids from SGAs all over the country,” said Flaked. “We learned a lot about some of the things we are doing wrong and some of the things we are doing right. We have already taken what we learned and are applying to our meetings.

“One of the things we are doing is taking on three projects at a time, instead of a million. Once we knock one of them out, we can add another one on the list. And we are doing short trainings in each meeting, to have all of our members become effective.”

Board Member Derrick Leslie said, “I am so excited to see SGA represented here and I am looking forward to more success stories.”

To which, Board Member Elias Jones added, “I am quite impressed how active SGA is on campus. Keep up the good work.”