Students at Flat Rock Community Schools are organizing a food drive to help families facing food insecurity as uncertainty around SNAP benefits continues to grow.

Watch Carli Petrus's video report: Flat Rock students organize food drive amid growing SNAP benefit uncertainty

The student-run initiative partners with the non-profit Helping Hands of Community Lutheran Church to collect canned and boxed food items for families in need throughout the community.

"It's hard to raise your kids or come to school when you don't know when your next meal is," said Drew Wilde, principal of Flat Rock Community High School.

Wilde said the need has never been greater, as concerns about SNAP benefits persist.

"If they don't have their benefits, you know, they're only going to get a portion of them, then that means that families are going to have to make some very serious sacrifices, and if we're able to alleviate some of that for them, that's what we'll do as a community," Wilde said.

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Students have turned the food drive into a friendly competition between schools. Bobcean Elementary and the high school have teamed up as "Team Evergreen," while the middle school and Barnes Elementary form "Team Meadows."

"What we're doing is we're actually pairing the schools up as teams, so we're having Bobcean Elementary and the high school team up as 'Team Evergreen', and then we're head-to-head with 'Team Meadows', which is the middle school and Barnes Elementary. We're going to see who can raise the most food for our community," said 12th grader Megan, a student organizer.

Fifth-grader Trevor, a student council member on Team Meadows, created posters with classmates to encourage donations.

"I'm a student council member and I made a poster about this with my other classmate to encourage people to donate," Trevor said.

For 12th-grader Alexia on Team Evergreen, the cause hits close to home through a friend's experience.

"She was talking about how she was struggling, her family was struggling personally because they can't afford food, and how this food drive is potentially going to help them to put food on the table. They have a large family; they have more than just two of them; they need food," Alexia said.

Alexia explained that many families face uncertainty about their food supply, especially during the holiday season.

"They don't know when the end of their food supply may come so some people may have SNAP benefits, still left and those might just go away like they might just run out of them or they might have money right now but because of the holiday season, because of Thanksgiving, they might not have money to afford food later on and that's what this food drive is mainly for," Alexia said.

The food drive runs through November 14. Community members can drop off non-perishable food items at the schools' main offices.

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As we transition from fall to the holidays, finding decorations may be a little tougher this year.

Tariffs and supply chain issues are hitting businesses right before the most wonderful time of the year, including at one family-owned craft store that's been part of the Center Line community for decades.

"Ive been doing this for over 30 years and weve never had to deal with anything like this," Vince Paine, the owner of Dealer's Discount Crafts and Florals in Center Line, said.

Dealer's offers just about every Christmas decoration you can imagine, from pink and gold trees to nutcrackers.

"All the ornaments you could ever want, baskets for gift baskets, we sell florals, ribbons," Paine said.

It's a beloved discount supplier in the community, and Paine said this year has been especially difficult, with tariffs to blame.

"We usually have a lot more variety. Since the factories shut down in the spring due to all the tariffs, didnt know what was going other than happen so they stopped producing the stuff and then when there was a 90-day window, everybody tried to rush and get everything shipped and that caused the freight prices to almost double, the ocean freight, so, that was even a bigger hit than the actual tariff cost," Paine said.

Oakland University supply chain expert, Dr. Henry Aigbedo, said global tariffs are pushing prices up, with businesses eating most of those extra costs right now.

"When you have tariffs on goods, whats going to happen is that the prices of those items is going to go up," Aigbedo said.

The tariffs are also tightening up the supply.

"Companies now have to make decisions as whether to continue to purchase the product or whether they will now need to look for new sources to get the items if they are too expensive.

He says the impact's slowly trickling down to consumers.

"When we talk about these Christmas decorations, a lot of them do come from China, so can we expect them to cost more this year? I asked Aigbedo.

"The answer is yes, but like I said before, mainly because of the expectation that the tariffs are going to make things more expensive, many of these companies brought in a lot of goods, so theyre going to be able to sell from what they have. But even then, you do not have enough to meet the regular demand," he said.

Depending on what you're buying, Aigbedo says you could see Christmas decorations priced up to 15% higher this year.

Consumers I spoke with say they haven't seen or heard anything yet, but neither higher prices, nor lower supply, would impact their shopping habits when it comes to buying decorations.

It's not going to matter. Im still going to buy the stuff I need to buy," one person told us.

"I have some stuff at home that I purchased last year that I already had, but if I need new lights, because you know, lights go out all the time, Ill definitely go out and get lights," another consumer told us.

Aigbedo said consumers should buy early and don't stress too much.

Paine said he's doing his best to shield customers from those rising costs.

"For this year, were going to keep them the same. We ended up eating the cost on those with the extra charges for this year, trying to help our customers out," Paine said. Next year at this time, if things arent better, we are going to have to pass along some of those costs in order to stay open.

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