Eastern Kentucky University will soon offer a new option for its students facing food insecurity.

Starting in the fall, it will accept supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program, or SNAP benefits, commonly known as food stamps, at one of its three convenience store locations on campus.

It's the first university in the state to offer the option.

EKU says it will give students better access to food and more nutritious options.

What people often think of as food insecurity is not necessarily what that necessarily means.

And so these are students who just have a hard time sometimes getting nutritional options and food that they need all the time.

And so it's not one of those where they don't have anything to eat.

It's just that, you know, maybe they're having to go all day Saturday without eating or all day Sunday without eating, things like that.

We actually had an app actually on campus.

It's like an anonymous post form.

And, you know, there's a lot of students on there who post a lot.

And some students are like, Well, I had to spend the last money I have in gas, so now I'm eating ramen noodles for a whole week or I'm just eating cereal for a couple of weeks.

Benefits.

You know, this provides more opportunities for students instead of them hoping to go off campus like a last minute, they can just go onto part market and they can buy a sandwich, a salad, some drinks for the week if they need to.

But it's a quick way and very convenient for them to go to that part market and user snap card to buy what they need in one case.

Donnie has always been a very good partner in terms of making sure that we're helping students who are dealing with food insecurity.

But sometimes having food available, as you know, during the day is one thing.

But if they don't have grocery items, then sometimes they can't meet those needs outside of those facilities.

So the idea came up.

It was actually funny enough.

It was brought up as an idea of that another university was was doing this and could we and it turned out they weren't doing it.

And but we're still good.

And so we tried to figure out a way to make it work.

Students who struggle with food insecurity, it allows them more wiggle room to be able to afford food on campus rather than worrying about where their next meal will come from.

Because some students work more than one job to be able to afford food on a daily basis Elsewhere.

A lot of stress for each of those students.

You're not going to be successful in a classroom or career if you're hungry.

It's just a reality.

I mean, if you don't have a place to sleep at night and you don't have something to eat during the day, you're probably not going to do very well in your classes.

And so we want people to be successful and and come here and have a great experience and have that sort of wrap around services that we can provide.

Now, students aren't the only ones who will benefit.

The community will also be able to buy food using SNAP benefits at the location.