The room provides resources for students at Sto-Rox Jr./Sr. High School, including shoes, clothes, feminine products and baby products. The Vikings Den had been in works for months, as Gariepy, of MHY Services and Dominick, of Communities in Schools worked to make it a reality.

The money, channeled through the Full-Service Community Schools grant program, will pay for capacity-building and other needs.

The Richard King Mellon Foundation, through a $2 million grant program, is working to address the root causes of chronic absenteeism in the region’s school systems.

“One mother told Channel 11 that if it weren’t for the nonprofit Communities in Schools of Pittsburgh and Allegheny County helping her keep food on the table and getting her children supplies to learn via virtual schooling, she would have been lost.”