In an effort to make sure no child goes hungry.

The Trenton School District is opening up its second food pantry.

The goal of the expansion is to support local families through resources currently offered through the community based program Mercer Street Friends.

In our continuing series Hunger in New Jersey.

Melissa Rose Cooper has more on the program, which helps address food insecurity and nutrition concerns for schoolchildren and their families.

One of the goals of a school is to meet the academic needs of our students, but that becomes increasingly difficult if we are unable to meet our students basic needs.

Basic needs, like making sure students have something to eat.

A challenge.

Victor Farnath, principal at Trenton's Dr. Martin Luther King Junior Middle School, wants to eradicate.

So he's joining community members and leaders to celebrate the opening of this food pantry and resource center as part of a partnership with the organization Mercer Street Friends, which aims to provide necessary services to students and their families.

Mercer Street Friends has been able to provide access to counseling service, create attendance initiatives for students and parents, and provide weekend food for all of our students.

They wouldn't go.

Hungry.

The pantry at Dr. Martin Luther King Junior Middle School is the second one to open.

The first opening just minutes away inside Gregory Elementary back in September.

There is no better expression, in my view, of the community school movement than a food pantry and a family resource center.

This is what we do.

We try to remove barriers to learning so that the wonderful staff, leadership and teachers right here at MLK can do their jobs and teach our children.

We are just so thankful for our partnership with Mercer Street Friends and really the start of a movement to eradicate the thought, the feeling and the words of I'm hungry from any student.

So this is a start of great work that has been in the makings and in the planning and is already in one school and we are hoping to continue it.

But we as a community need to be collaborative to make sure that there is never any child in the city of Trenton that needs to utter the words I'm hungry.

Local leaders applauding the pantry and the positive impact it will have for students.

Knowing that our children don't have the concern of being worried about whether or not they're going to have food or not know that their minds can be fed here in school, but they also can get nourishment to take back home.

It is a challenging situation where you don't know whether or not you are going to have enough to eat.

And this help to take away one of those barriers.

We have a lot of of food deserts and folks don't realize it because the pockets that we have and knowing that the little street front recognizes that and I'm not just talking about but they're doing actually something about it makes a difference.

This is only the beginning.

We have a goal to become a true community school.

The students that walk our halls today will become the leaders outside of these walls tomorrow, and we wanted to help them in their families in any way possible.

This pantry will stand as a symbol of compassion, unity and commitment to helping one another in Trenton.

Mercer Street Friends is planning to open a third pantry early next year, and eventually each one will be available for both students and the entire community.

For NJ Spotlight News, I'm Melissa Rose Cooper.