Through your generosity and support, we were able to complete GOT IT (Saturday School) successfully. GOT IT (Saturday School) was able to support numerous seniors and graduating juniors through multiple effective educational programs. First, GOT IT provided food and instruction to twenty-five seniors as they earned their required CPR credit for graduation. GOT IT then provided three Saturdays of instruction and food to students in grades 9-12 with emphasis on students in grades eleventh and twelfth. Due to the additional academic support, GOT IT provided to graduating juniors and seniors, Northside High School graduated 135 students on Friday, May 18, 2021. We hope to extend educational services as well as develop other educational programs in the 2021-2022 school year due to the success of the academic programs in the 2020-2021 school year.
During the 2020-2021 school year, $940.97 was spent on funding academic programs, which still gives us over $2,100.00 to spend on the educational programs for the 2021-2022 school year. Our goal is to continue providing students with academic support to ensure they have the skills necessary to: obtain basic or above on the end-of-course assessment, pass each core class with a 70% or better, and graduate from high school on time. GOT IT will work on planning for the upcoming school year once we have identified the academic needs of the students in grades 11th and 12th. Again, thank you for your support as we continue to develop a community that is educational resourceful, supportive, and strong for all.
We’ve been working hard to get to this point, but since our last update, LCG provided all the datapoints for storm drain locations to our team a few months ago. Our tech team, led by Tre King of InFascination, are volunteering their programming skills to move the technical aspect of this project forward. Also, since our last update, ULL Marketing students developed our marketing and communications plan for our pilot zones, Saints Street residents and downtown businesses. Most of our team has relocated to other locations around the country, but we’re confident a local organization will take ownership and implement the marketing plan once the platform is ready for public use.
We’ll be in touch soon.
Thanks,
Katy Dupre
Adopt A Storm Drain Team Leader
It has been a rough year for many of us, but we made it through. Some of our team members left the group due to other pressing priorities and a few of us had COVID-19 at the end of the year. You may recall, our project decided to pivot away from the veggie “mobility” via the bike due to Covid concerns, and decided to continue providing an outlet for healthy produce during weekend food markets. Despite the difficulties, we were able to host markets most of the year twice a month. We were not able to host any markets in December or January because of COVID concerns, but we are resuming the markets on 02/13-14/2021 and will continue on the 2nd Saturday or Sunday and 3rd Saturday at the MCV Community House 419 12th St. Because of some of the concerns with COVID we have decided to host most of the markets at the community house with an open air atmosphere and at different locations in the community weather permitting.
We were able to pay it forward with 15 veggie bags, feed our neighbors locally and in Vinton, LA. It’s our hope to continue this journey to provide fresh produce to our community and to one day resuming going out with the veggie bike reaching more of the community. We would like to thank the community for supporting this adventure and we look forward to seeing everyone in 2021.
Thanks,
Trincella Bonnet
Veggie on the Go Team Leader
We pressed ‘pause’, took a step back and evaluated our approaches and processes. We weren’t making timely progress and we were determined to understand why. We recognized significant scope creep which deviated from our original proposal. As a result of these honest evaluations, we were able to re-center ourselves and our project around its original value proposition — open source projects can and should be completed within a limited time frame, for free.
We leveraged Lafayette’s technology talent base by connecting with them via Slack (a short form communication platform similar to AOL Instant Messenger, but WAY cooler and more robust). After joining the Acadiana Software Group’s Slack team, we were able to directly connect with tech talent interested in open source community projects, like ours. Interested participants have been able to replicate the original code for “Adopt A” GitHub page. The platform is 80% developed and will be ready for public testing by the end of the first quarter in 2021. If you want to help us with testing the functionality of the platform, like us on Facebook. We’ll be updating our followers on that social media platform.
A major barrier throughout 2020 was obtaining access to data from LCG. We were unable to obtain a full dataset of storm drain locations (due to undefined security concerns from LCG), but we were able to get our hands on location data for two distinct pilot zone areas. Those areas can be viewed on this google map (https://www.google.com/maps/d/edit?mid=1PY-A3iJqsjyTcXI3bKiAkULxXRjCIOfh&usp=sharing). We hope that, in time, a full dataset will be shared with our team. If other places are able and willing to share this public information, then we believe it can, and should, be publicly available and accessible in Lafayette, LA.
Our 24HCP funding is dedicated to marketing and communications. As such, we’re partnering with University of Louisiana at Lafayette Sales and Marketing students on an Experiential Learning class project where students will develop and execute a marketing plan. They’ll also be responsible for providing a performance evaluation report on how their plan succeeded or failed. Metrics of success will include a 75% adoption rate within the two pilot zone areas, increased social media engagement, and increased public awareness and demand for open data projects across Lafayette.
Thanks,
Katy Dupre
Adopt A Storm Drain Team Leader
Our team’s last update ended with us looking optimistically to the upcoming school year. Unfortunately, we were not able to resume classes due to the many changes with students, schools, and at The Clearport. The lives of our initial group of students resulted in them moving, being virtual, graduating early, and other personal situations. As a result, we reassessed our plan and delayed it once again.
Before the delay, we purchased equipment during the summer in anticipation of the school year. We were able to safely record a few video clips that were posted on Clearport social media accounts. The Self Interview set consisted of 2 phones, a microphone, a ring light, and light box. The best part was seeing their reactions when viewing the final product. I definitely see those clips as a glimmer of hope and a sneak peak of what is to come.
For now, we will focus on developing connections with a new group of students who display an interest in media and film. They will take classes when we resume in the summer or Fall 2021. I struggled to find the words to describe last year’s impact on teens in our city. I think it is still best that they tell it on their own, when it is safe. Until then, we are patiently waiting and looking forward to that time.
