Dear Community,
The Freetown Sound Lab has already hit the ground running with 5 in-person interviews of neighborhood citizens. We’ve already started to capture some amazing stories such as the Black Baseball League in Lafayette and The Circus Comes to Town, to name a few. We are planning the build-out for the in-house lab to begin early March. Website development is also underway. Stay tuned for more to come.
Team Freetown Sound Lab
Hello community!
We are still so grateful for the support that we have received for this project. The relationships are connections we’ve been able to establish and harness is more than inspiring. We are happy to announce we will be partnering with the city of youngsville to bring a safe space to their Mardi Gras parade. Kudos to Youngsville for being progressive.
We are also in talks with UL to have a space for one of their home games! Yeah UL! We will be providing sensory bags for the autism society’s annual event as well as the DREAMS Foundation event on April 29. Just another example of our community together for one cause: inclusion. Purpose acceptance and opportunity are what we all deserve. These spaces allow for that!.
We are ready to hit Festival International head on even better than last year and can’t wait to purchase equipment and signage! Not only will this help us make our mission mobile but it will allow us to educate our growing community on sensory processing and the challenges and individual and their families face when there’s nowhere to go at an event. Our community is strong …our community is growing and we don’t see an end in site! Thanks so much! Stay tuned. #beluga
Team Sensory Safe Spaces
Dear Community,
Since our last update, Team GPS met with Brandon Noah of Unitech Training Academy and Mr. Darby, Northside High School’s Senior Counselor, to determine eligibility requirements for three (3) Northside High School Seniors to receive FULL academic scholarships to Unitech Training Academy. We will interview six (6) Northside High Seniors on February 8 to finalize the Unitech Scholarship Recipients to attend Unitech after graduation.
One of the objectives of the GPS Project is to provide guidance and resources to help students improve their ACT scores. On February 3, Team GPS met with NHS JAG students to discuss the significance of taking the ACT. Team GPS will begin ACT Prep with forty (40) JAG students on February 6 until March 7 when juniors and seniors take the ACT exam given by the school district.
Team GPS held it’s second JAG Academic Celebration at Northside on January 27. Students who earned a 3.0 or above with no D’s or F’s and/or successfully achieved their 2nd 9-weeks S.M.A.R.T. goals were awarded a certificate, movie pass, and sweet treats from Nuthin Bundt Cakes.
We are excited about every opportunity to connect with Northside JAG students to provide guidance, encouragement, and resources to help them transition to post-secondary education.
Thank you again for your support.
Karen Dugas & Team GPS
Dear Community,
Team Seed Library checking in again to update you on our progress! With every intention of sounding cheesy- the SEED that was planted at our Healthy Acadiana Coalition meeting back in June of 2022 has really GROWN! We can’t thank all of you enough for believing in this project!
We are still on track for our launch date but when we know for sure we will invite each of you!
Our final name is The Seed Library by Healthy Acadiana, and this will be reflected in the logo being designed for us! We’ve had several meetings in the past few weeks to figure out branding and we are so excited to share this with you when we have a logo!
The cabinet, a replica card catalog, is being built by someone awesome and after seeing his other work we know it’s going to be beautiful!
We’ve asked many seed companies, 11 to be exact, for donations of seeds and we are happy to announce that approximately 500 seed packets of various varieties are on their way to us as I type this letter! This frees up some initial money we set aside to purchase seeds so we can purchase more for later dates to help our sustainability.
We can’t do this work alone and want to thank our subcommittee members for their hard work in figuring out the checkout process, donation processes, what types of seeds to purchase, and all the things in between to make this a huge success.
We can’t wait to be able to share the Seed Library with all of you.
Healthy wishes,
Team Seed Library
Dear Community,
Since receiving the $4,000 from the 24 Hour Citizens Project we have hit the ground running! Inclusive Prom will be taking place on Saturday, March 11th from 7:00-10:00pm. Team Inclusive Prom was initially made up of member of Acadiana Queer Collective but has since grown to include; The Family Tree/Jacob Crouch Suicide Prevention, PFLAG Lafayette, Safe Havynn, and We Demand More. We have met twice so far to begin planning Inclusive Prom and will be meeting with a potential host for the event today. We haven’t spent any money yet and instead are inquiring with vendors and potential sponsors who can offer us in-kind donations to supplement the budget we’ve already created. We will be offering each participant at prom a Swag Bag full of goodies and resources from around the community. We also hope to have a raffle that offers each participant the opportunity to win awesome prizes. Currently, across social media platforms we are asking the community to vote on a theme for prom–currently it’s ‘Alice in Wonderland’ vs. “The 4 Elements” and “Retro” vs, “Over the Rainbow” in a head-to-head match. We will be sharing the winners of this match soon so that voting for the final theme can happen.
Thank you Community!
Team inclusive Prom
Dear Community,
The Seed Library is growing! We are still in awe of the magic that the 24 Hr. Citizen Project gave to us. Between our conversations with the experts, the community support, and the other amazing teams we are so excited to see what’s to come for all of us.
Since receiving the funding we’ve held various meetings to keep planning and moving forward. Most notably:
1. Took photos with the BIG Check with our committee and library staff to gain excitement.
2. Branding discussions
3. Formation of an expert Advisory Council
4. Picked out a cabinet to house the seeds.
5. Figured out processes for “checking out” the seeds.
6. Thanked the amazing backers! In the new year (how is it 2023, already?) we will begin to use the funding we so generously received from the backers at the 24HCP.
We can’t wait to update you again in February because by then we will have hopefully purchased the cabinet, seeds, and have a good understanding of where we need help and be deep in the planning of the launch in March. Our team would like to thank the 24HCP, the amazing backers and you for the support we received during the event and ongoing. We look forward to sharing more with you in the coming months.
Healthy Wishes,
Marissa Winters & the Healthy Acadiana Team