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!
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.
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.
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!
We hope this message finds you well and enjoying the transition into fall! We are excited to share an update on Team Fais Doo Doo’s efforts to install pet waste stations in Downtown Lafayette. As many of you know, keeping our community clean and enjoyable for everyone—pets included—is a top priority for us.
While we experienced a couple of setbacks over the summer, we’re pleased to report that things are back in full swing. Thanks to the hard work and dedication of our team, we’re making significant progress toward having the waste stations up and running this fall. In addition to our efforts downtown, we’ve partnered with our neighbors in the Freetown-Port Rico community to relocate one of our ten pet waste stations to Heritage Park, a popular grassy area across the street from Gary’s. This collaboration will help extend the benefits of clean, pet-friendly spaces to even more of our community.
We’re happy to report that all supplies have been delivered, the waste stations have been assembled, and locations for installation have been marked. The only thing left is for gas lines to be marked so we can safely install the stations.
We’re looking forward to getting these stations operational soon, and we appreciate your patience and support as we complete this project. Together, we’re making Lafayette a cleaner, friendlier place for all! Thank you for being a part of this important initiative.
On the magical evening of April 27, 2024, 24 HCP and Sensory Grooves opened the doors of Wonderland Performing Arts in true red-carpet fashion celebrating our sensory and neurodivergent 8th-12th graders in and around the Acadiana area.
The night began as our Sensory Grooves staff placed a numbered VIP bracelet for each participant to adorn for the evening with a matching number tag given to the caregiver. This ensured that safety was the priority at check-in and check-out. After check-in, the grooviest selfie-station could not be missed. The sparkles and decor made each capture (texted/emailed) a build up to the exciting celebration ahead. Smiles of anticipation grew as each promenaded to the event room passing our professional and fun-loving security officer (Hub Enterprises). A representative from the silent disco headset company, Dohm Collective, eagerly awaited each participant with individualized headsets and instructions to begin grooving into the night. With the beats pumping, prom night officially began!
A groovy volunteer (supporter Owner/Speech Therapist of Let’s Talk, Rhea Dugas) shared her sensory knowledge and kindness with a table filled with radical sensory items to ensure each a personalized sensory experience.
Senses were immediately captured as the smell of fresh popcorn (Lafayette Rental Company) and hot pizza (Little Caesars of Broussard) filled the air. The vision of disco balloon towers encompassed the dance floor and Sensory Groove: Silent Disco Prom projected backdrop (supporters Montz Designs and BWPR) completed the decor.
Dohm Collective’s disc jockeys and Sensory Grooves own DJ Tory Trahan kicked the beats of three different music genres. The dance floor was graced with rhythmic expression by attendees dressed in expressive formal wear grooving their personalized night away. As the smiles grew so did the need for a cold drink. The thirsts were quenched with choice of water, lemonade, sweet tea (supporter Canes #53 – The Hook, Galen Istre), and Pepsi products (Acadiana Bottling). As breaks from dancing were needed, participants visited (supporter and groovy volunteer, Mrs. Marvette Johnson) Lynn’s Captures as she festively captured the evening with a free professional photograph.
No prom would be complete without a swag bag (supporter Cane’s – The Hook, Galen Istre) personally filled each swag bag with Cane’s merchandise and gift cards. Sensory Groove’s own Kathy Ladner extended swag stickers of Live A Great Story philosophy to our grooving participants; encouraging each to become the hero of their own story.
Sensory Grooves: Silent Disco Prom was promoted through social media, community calendars, direct emails to local school administration, doctors, therapists, and flyers (Lowry’s Printing) placed at locally owned stores; new friendships were forged as sixty groovers came from as far south as Houma and the surrounding Acadiana area. This majestic evening, one that most did not ever think they would be able to participate in, was graciously funded by the backers of 24 Hour Citizen Project for 100 participants. Our first year was a true learning experience. Sensory Grooves is extremely blessed and thankful to 24 HCP and backers for the opportunity to create and host such an evening. With that said, we have learned many groovy lessons as a team. We encountered bumps and obstacles with our team not truly grasping the number of hours dedicated to such a project. And with that we lost team members which handed down responsibilities onto others; but we made it work with dedication to the members of the community we created this evening for. Budget was another obstacle as our team knew what our participants needed and deserved. Without in-kind donations from our community supporters, we would have not been able to accomplish all that we did for the grooviest evening. April 27, 2024, was a brilliantly successful evening dedicated to the sensory and neurodivergent community. Sensory Grooves: Silent Disco Prom looks forward to hosting this spectacular event annually.
