Soap and Hope Update #1

Soap and Hope Update #1

by | May 28, 2025 | Blog, Soap & Hope

Dear Community,

It took three months from the time we received our grant funding to shop for all the items needed to stock our community pantries. By shopping in-store at Dollar Tree, Walmart, and Sam’s Club, we were able to save a great deal on shipping fees and stretch our budget further. With great care and intention, we purchased essential cleaning and hygiene supplies to support families in need.

We successfully stocked closets at two separate locations and maintain an overflow pantry at home to ensure we can restock each site each month. The pantries are filled with everyday essentials including laundry detergent, dish liquid, body soap, hand soap, all-purpose cleaner, bleach, toothpaste, dryer sheets, lotion, feminine hygiene products, toilet paper, and more. After months of preparation, we officially completed the setup and began servicing both sites on May 1st, 2025, following a ribbon-cutting ceremony held on April 29th. Since opening, we have proudly served over 40 families.

We are deeply grateful for the generous contributions from our backers, the support from our community, and the partnership with the amazing staff at 24hrcp, all of whom helped make this dream a reality. We are currently accepting both tangible and monetary donations from the public and are actively seeking additional grant funding to keep these pantries fully stocked and eventually expand to other areas of the city.

We are also working closely with LHA administration and faculty to ensure these services are used appropriately and benefit those truly in need.

With best regards,
Team Soap and Hope

Art on Wheels Update #1

Art on Wheels Update #1

by | May 28, 2025 | Art on Wheels, Blog

Dear Community,

We hope this message finds you well! We are excited to share an Art on Wheels progress update with you! Since we last saw many of you, our passion for creating a safe and vibrant city for cyclists and pedestrians has only grown. One of our biggest updates—and challenges—has been a change in scope: we are now installing two bicycle racks instead of three. Rising fabrication costs and our decision to switch from a surface mount to a more durable in-ground mount significantly impacted the project budget. During a site visit with installers, we observed that a portion of the surface-mounted racks downtown have not held up over time, and so, for two months, we thoroughly explored alternative designs and installation methods before ultimately choosing the strongest and longest-lasting installation option. While this meant scaling back, we firmly believe that quality over quantity will better serve the community in the long run.

As for our progress, we are happy to report that final locations have been selected downtown and at Super One Foods. We conducted ADA checks and met on site with the installer to flush out final installation details. We have also partnered with Bike Lafayette to be our Fiscal Sponsor as we receive and spend funds related to the Art on Wheels initiative. To continue to promote our project, we have created a logo, Facebook and Instagram pages(@Artonwheels_Lafayette), and ways to support and participate. We have started an interest form(https://forms.gle/k48Fgq52utyTk12J7) for businesses and organizations who are interested in getting a bike rack art mural and started a GoFundMe to raise funds for future racks(https://gofund.me/595db645). We’re excited to announce that Fightingville Fresh, a neighborhood farmer’s market located in an area of town with high cyclist ridership, will receive the first fully crowdfunded bike rack, thanks to generous community support via the GoFundMe. We’re also exploring grants and community funding options so that more businesses and organizations—especially those needing financial assistance—can get their own bike rack art mural in coming years.

Our long-term goal is to install at least 10 Bicycle Rack Art Murals in Lafayette over the next 5 years, averaging about two per year. We hope the first two installations in 2025 will serve as a proof of concept, inspiring more interest and enthusiasm from the community and businesses alike. We hope to make a lot of progress this summer by finalizing the order and starting fabrication with HydroBlade for the first two bicycle racks. By the end of the summer, we would like to have the promotion of the Art Competition started with a Call for Artists sent out to the community. When the competition closes, two winners will be selected in the Fall and then the artists will be given a few weeks to paint the bicycle racks before they are installed at the selected downtown location and at Super One before the end of the year. We will be hosting a group ride and ribbon cutting when the Bicycle Rack Art Murals are installed at the end of 2025.

Our long-term goal is to install at least 10 Bicycle Rack Art Murals in Lafayette over the next 5 years, averaging about two per year. We hope the first two installations in 2025 will serve as a proof of concept, inspiring more interest and enthusiasm from the community and businesses alike. Additional long term goals include a Fun Ride(a fundraiser bike ride), applying for grants, continued promotion like going door to door to businesses who would benefit from installing a bike rack, expanding our team, creating a website, getting on local news stations to talk about Art on Wheels, and continuing to use social media to keep the energy and excitement up.

One of our favorite parts of this project is that all funds stay local—supporting Lafayette’s artists, fabricators, and installers while the community benefits from more art and bicycle parking across town. If you’re interested in a Bike Rack Art Mural, we invite you to fill out the Interest Form. Together, we can make Lafayette a more beautiful, vibrant, and bike-friendly community. Thank you for your continued support of the Art on Wheels initiative!

Sincerely,
Blair Begnaud, Gabe Griffard, and Matthew Dufrene
Team Art on Wheels

Reel Connections Update #1

Reel Connections Update #1

by | May 28, 2025 | Blog, Reel Connections

Dear Community,

Since winning funding for a family mental health movie night in November, Team Reel Connections has been hard at work planning our event! We are pleased to share that we will be celebrating Mental Health Awareness Month by hosting the first of our (E)motion Picture Events on May 31, 2025! We have found a great partner in the Children’s Museum of Acadiana and they will serve as host location for the movie night.

At the event on May 31st, we will watch Homeward Bound – a classic tale of animal friends taking on a big adventure and overcoming great obstacles. We will follow the movie with a short discussion facilitated by mental health professionals to discuss themes like perseverance, friendship, and loyalty seen in the film. The goal of this discussion is to help families practice sharing openly about topics they may not be used to discussing and to provide strategies for engaging in “tough” conversations at home.

We are so grateful to the 24 Hour Citizen Project for providing us the resources to bring this event to Acadiana and all the many volunteers who are working tirelessly to bring it to life. Community, we want to see you at the FREE family movie night on Saturday, May 31st. Please reserve your tickets at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/emotion-picture-events-family-movie-discussion-tickets-1312396145199?aff=oddtdtcreator so we can keep the popcorn warm for you!

See you at the movies!

Doula Right Thing Update #1

Doula Right Thing Update #1

by | May 22, 2025 | Blog, Doula Right Thing

Hi Community! I think our update is relatively the same as the very first update, with one change. Instead of our training weekend being the weekend of June 21, it is now going to be June 28, just a weekend later. Up to this point, we have trained 33 doulas, AND several of them are making a profession out of it. Some are even going into midwifery! My hope with this training you have funded (the weekend of June 28) is that we will inspire them to do the same. The more doulas we have out there, the better outcomes our community will have.

One other change is that our trainers are using Asana to track our tasks for the training weekend. It keeps us organized. Canvas is also being used and is an education program we added as a bonus to the training they will already receive training weekend. Instead of 3 long days of training, we are teaching the doulas online in 4, 2-hour segments and then one Saturday of intense doula skills training. We will also have one evening for awards/certificates and socialization.

Barbers, Boys, and Books Update #2

Barbers, Boys, and Books Update #2

by | Dec 12, 2024 | Barbers, Boys, and Books, Blog

We are still excited about being chosen as one of the 24hr Citizen Project awardees of funding for our Barbers, Boys, and Books literacy initiative. The 100 Black Men of Greater Lafayette is an advocate of academic excellence. The 24hr Citizen Project and its donors provided us the opportunity to increase literacy within the community. For that, we are extremely grateful.

Reading is paramount to the educational success of our kids. For students experiencing poverty, reading levels are stunningly low. Study shows that there’s a correlation between reading level and income. Higher income is linked to higher literacy. We aim to increase the literacy rate by placing a mini library in barbershops throughout the north side of Lafayette. The libraries will include age-appropriate books for elementary and middle school age kids.

In doing so, we acquired 21 mini bookshelves that were placed in barbershops and salons located in North Lafayette. Each mini-library was filled with children’s books mainly donated by Save the Children HeadStart.

As part of our education platform, this initiative will truly have a significant impact on reading levels in our community. The 100 BMOGL is appreciative of the investments through 24hr Citizen Project. We encourage current donors to continue their generosity and ask potential philanthropists to consider investing in the work and outcomes of 24hr Citizen Project.

Acadiana Art Closet Update #3

Acadiana Art Closet Update #3

by | Nov 8, 2024 | Acadiana Art Closet, Blog

Dear Community –

What a whirlwind the past few months have been – and not necessarily in a good way, unfortunately. As a group, we have really been learning about what it is to lead community work that gets people excited but it is hard to find folks offering a real commitment to joining the mission. We have been eager to get things rolling and really had assumed we would have so much to share by this time, so here’s what has been going on:

  • We had a group who was super excited about the plan and willing to build our art closets free of charge, which was thrilling! We could then use the allotted funding for strictly art supplies. Because it was such a promising lead, we really hung on for probably longer than we should have… passions seem to have shifted a bit for those folks, and we don’t blame them.
  • We then had another passionate “YES” to being involved and building some closets for us. Similar to the first group, it seems that more important work took precedent.

SO – we have regrouped. If you attended the Big Event last year, you would be familiar with the Art Closet we had on wheels. We have tapped that builder for ONE MORE closet for us, this one being the biggest of the ones we have planned to be installed outside of J. Wallace James Elementary. Speaking of JWJ, they have a new Principal, Ms. Tassin, who has voiced her excitement over the project, too. More info is coming once we get this one going.

We were gifted a closet by School Board Member, Dr. Joshua Edmond, and plan to get this one set up to be partially mobile and housed at the Fightingville Fresh Market, which we are pumped about.

We also have another very talented carpenter interested in helping out with the last few boxes…but you can imagine how we are holding on to this excitement with some hesitancy…!

We are still as excited and determined as ever to bring art to the art deserts, so don’t think this slow slow pace has us down. 2024 is STILL going to be the year of the Acadiana Art Closet!

Love,
Acadiana Art Closet Team