How One Nurse’s Snack Closet Is Changing Lives at a Small-Town High School
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School nurse and mother of three, Jennifer Ervin, LPN, started a snack and supply closet at her local school.
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The closet is stocked with everything from peanut butter crackers to deodorant to extra toothbrushes.
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Students know they can get snacks and supplies from the snack closet, no questions asked.
By anyone’s standards, the nurse’s office at Moore County High School in Lynchburg, VA, isn’t much larger than a storage room. But thanks to school nurse Jennifer Ervin, LPN, it's become a safe place for many students through a surprising way: snacks.
The Moore County High School “snack closet” started when Ervin—herself a mother of three in the school's elementary—saw a Facebook post about a classroom "store." She loved the idea of ensuring that students could have access to snacks and other necessary school supplies whenever they needed them.
So, she began small, gathering a few snacks and procuring a monthly donation from a local Farmers' Bureau. Other parents and community members chipped in with donations, giving everything from bottled water to deodorant to socks and school supplies.
Soon, her modest snack closet grew into a successful enterprise that includes a daily supply and snack closet open to students and a schoolwide snack cart all students have access to.
Supply and Demand
According to the Moore County News, Ervin has one simple rule about her snack closet: take what you need.
“If you overslept and didn’t brush your teeth, you can fix that here,” Ervin explained. “If you forgot deodorant, we’ve got you.”
Students are free to take anything they need from the supply closet, and Ervin rolls out her 'snack cart' every morning into the lobby for open access. Typically, the cart is cleared out by second period, but that's okay, because students have full confidence the cart will be restocked and ready the next day.
Once the cart is empty, any students still in need of more snacks and supplies can visit the school snack closet, which Ervin runs with help from another school employee, Brenda Dye.
Once a Nurse, Always a Nurse
The students who utilize the snack closet are receiving hope and support alongside the odd peanut butter cracker, but Ervin sees her snack mission as an extension of her work as a nurse.
“I’ve always wanted to be a nurse,” Jennifer said. “Never anything else.”
With a background that includes everything from working with medically complex students to home care to assisted living, Ervin has never known a life without helping others.
“I think I’m just wired this way,” she told Moore County News. “That’s the nurse in me.”
Ervin also knows what it's like to find help when you need it the most, having been propped up by her community and loved ones when she survived thyroid cancer in 2011.
"Cancer taught me: you lose it, and then you get back up," Ervin said.
And that's exactly what Ervin is doing, day in and day out, with her snack closet and cart mission. She's getting up and helping her students and the community, one granola bar at a time.
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