Oasis Food Pantry

Oasis Food Pantry

by | Nov 6, 2021

Oasis Food Pantry

Project Description

The Oasis Pantry will serve as an alternative food resource for the Oasis Community. Constructed in an easily accessible location within the neighborhood, this unit will feature cool items, nonperishables, and fresh fruit and vegetables. The pantry will also include a Dropbox for area residents to give donations throughout the week. While we welcome all community members to partake and participate in this initiative, its centralized location will allow safe and easy accessibility to our community’s most vulnerable population, children under the age of 14.The food pantry would not only be a way to curb hunger but to show love & compassion. We at Oasis believe that we can help the problem by becoming the internal solution. Being proactive in this time is critical and needed. Showing love and hope is not only rewarding but appreciated by the ones receiving. It is our hope that this pantry will also be a cycle of hope in our community in that when families utilize the resources of the pantry and are able to get back on their feet, they can invest back into the pantry for other families in need.The oasis food pantry is not only a way for us to give back to the community, but for the community to give back to itself. Our hope is that this initiative will spark community engagement, pride and unification.

The idea for constructing this neighborhood pantry is not only for needy families in our community but for the homeless population existing in our community. We have a heavy presence of homeless people in our community and the pantry is to be the hand up they need, continuing the restoration in our community. We desire for our residents to see Oasis Pantry as a reservoir and source of hope, healing and restoration.

Project Details

Team Leader: Valerie Lewis / Josh Edmond
Funded Date: November 6, 2021
Amount: $2,500
Location: Lafayette, LA

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Creole Garsons

Creole Garsons

by | Nov 6, 2021

Creole Garsons

Project Description

Project Creole Garsons aims to increase male participation in the performing arts. There are several socially-constructed circumstances that negatively impact male participation. This scholarship program will work to eliminate many of these barriers by exposing the participants to a series of workshops and classes in a variety of artistic genres mostly led by male professional artists. The participants will then apply their knowledge in their artistic area(s) of interests. The program will culminate in the boys’ own artistic performance or production work being featured in the Creole Nutcracker.
The Creole Nutcracker was born out of the hearts of its two creators whose main purpose is to further expose the youth of Acadiana to the arts. The production is seasoned with the food, the language, and the music of the charming Creole culture. Each participant has an opportunity to perform on stage or work behind the scenes getting first-hand experience in a variety of different forms of the arts. Since 2018, The Creole Nutcracker has educated over 200 young performers as cast members. In these 4 years, 191 of the 200 young artists were female, and only 9 were male.
In our goal of exposing and educating the youth of Acadiana to the arts, we have been missing the mark with our young male population. Project Creole Garsons was created to fix this problem. The report Living the Arts through Language + Learning showed that young people with high arts involvement were 4 times more likely to be recognized for academic achievement, 4 times more likely to participate in a math and science fair, 3 times more likely to win an award for school attendance, and 3 times more likely to be elected to class office. All students deserve the opportunity to take part in the arts, both in school and in the community. The arts encourage students to: stay in school, succeed in school, succeed in life and succeed in work. It is proven that the arts benefit a child’s social development and academic achievement. And we need more boys in Acadiana getting these benefits!
There are several socially-constructed circumstances that negatively impact male participation in the arts. This scholarship program will work to eliminate many of these barriers by exposing the participants to a series of workshops and classes in a variety of artistic genres mostly led by male professional artists. The participants will then apply their knowledge in their artistic area(s) of interests. The program will culminate in the boys’ own artistic performance or production work being featured in the Creole Nutcracker. Creole Garsons is designed to foster creativity in more young men, and give them outlets for self-expression. From ballet to hip-hop and lighting to stage management, our program has something that will inspire tous les garsons.

Project Details

Team Leaders: Leigha Porter / Jazmyn Jones
Funded Date: November 6, 2021
Amount: $2,500
Location: Lafayette, LA

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Mad Thinkers

Mad Thinkers

by | Nov 6, 2021

Mad Thinkers

Project Description

Our team is creating a traveling, interactive theatre workshop that provides a performing arts outlet for youth in our community. This workshop will be 3 hours long, and includes a solid curriculum covering an introduction to theatre, along with a Mad-Lib style original play that explores important topics like bullying, self-esteem, and team-work! Our team is equipped with trained professionals to execute this project and we can’t wait to get started!

This project is two-fold.    For the children: Theatre activities provide an interactive, creative & immersive gateway for kids to express themselves & learn about the world around them. Theatre artists make observations and use life experiences to perform their realities, hopes, dreams, and ideas. Being part of a theatre activity can give a child the tools to be collaborative and creatively problem solve within a group. This project would be an attempt to expose youth to these skills in a fun and effective way!

For the professional theatre artists living in this community:   Too often, theatre artists work for free, especially in Acadiana. This leads them to leaving our area to seek paid work in their field. One of my goals, as a citizen of Lafayette, is to create job opportunities for our local performing arts talent. This is one small project, that if executed with care, can grow into a program that impacts children and supplies theatre professionals with jobs in future years.        Performing arts programming is often the first line item removed from school budgets. This negatively impacts both the children and theatre professionals in our area. This project will bridge the gap in performing arts offerings in our community by being accessible due to its mobility. With this project, teaching artists will travel to students who will benefit greatly from this experience.

Our team wants to share our knowledge of why theatre is important, what we can learn from theatre, character development, relationships, and storytelling with children in our community. Our hope is to introduce these concepts to children to give them a creative writing and performance outlet. First, the kids will be led through improv exercises that build self-confidence. Then they will become part of creating a story, giving them ownership and a sense of pride in their work. Volunteers from the group of children will be allowed to become our actors for the play we create together! They’ll dress up in costumes and use special props to aid them in acting the story out while the story is narrated by the instructors. Those not performing the piece will be part of our interactive audience. The instructors will give them cues in the script to listen for, and various things to do (make a sound effect, clap, stomp, etc) when certain things are said by the actors on stage. This demonstrates that all jobs in theatre are important, even being an audience member!

Project Details

Team Leader: Allison Brandon
Funded Date: November 6, 2021
Amount: $3,600
Location: Lafayette, LA

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Saturday School

Saturday School

by | Dec 30, 2019

Saturday School: The EdD Series

Project Description

Saturday School is an academic project that will support the continued efforts of the Lafayette Parish School System to academically advance students. The project will specifically focus on core subject to ensure students are at grade level, pass EOC and graduate high school. The goal of the program is push students to new academic heights as we encourage them to be lifelong learners who share their knowledge and skill set with other Lafayette residents. This program has the potential to: improve student academic performance, which will allow student’s to be on grade level and increase the number of students who are graduating from high school with a traditional high school diploma.

Currently, there are a number of failing or lack of academic progress schools within Lafayette Parish. These schools range from elementary to high school, with all of the schools being within the Transformation Zone. The Transformation Zone is an area within Lafayette Parish that receives additional funding to support the academic and professional growth of students and educators. Although there is a clear effort from the school board to support academic growth within the transformation zone, many students are more than one grade level behind, which makes it difficult to obtain academic success with in the school year. My idea is to support the efforts of the transformation zone as we focus on developing student’s academic skills in a smaller and engaging learning environment. I would like to begin Saturday School by diagnosing students’ area of weakness to provide student’s with additional academic support to ensure they reach grade level standards and pass their end of the year state exam.

In order to ensure participation and academic growth, the Saturday School session will be four weeks. The schedule will be as follows:

Week 1: Diagnostic Week. Students will be tested to determine their area(s) of weakness. This test will determine where they will be placed for the remanding three Saturdays.

Weeks 2-4: Teachers will develop students’ academic skills through a supportive and engaging learning environment. Students will be able to take up to two core classes a Saturday. Courses that will be offered are: Science, Social Studies, Math, and Language Arts.

Certified educators who have been trained to provide engaging activities for at risk students will provide academic support. The activities will be directly aligned to the states educational standards for each grade level to ensure academic growth.

Working together as a community to provide students with additional academic support will help to improve the academic performance of our students, the schools performance score and the removal of the transformation zone stigma. Education is the key to improving the number of Lafayette residences, who graduate high school, receive post secondary education or training and become employed within the state of Louisiana. Programs such as Saturday School will allows students to feel supported as we encourage their commitment to learning.

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Project Details

Team Leader Brandi Clay
Funded Date November 9, 2019
Funding Amount: $3,500
Location: Lafayette, LA

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Greening Festival

Greening Festival

by | Dec 30, 2019

Greening Festival

Project Description

Team Greening Festival wants to reduce the amount of waste created at Festival International and be part of catalyzing a styrofoam-free Lafayette!  The ultimate goal of this project is to put Festival International on the road to becoming a “zero waste” event. The first step is replacing styrofoam serviceware items (i.e. plates, bowls, and clamshells) used by Festival vendors with compostable versions made out of bagasse, a byproduct of sugarcane mills.

We’re bringing out the FIL Geaux Green logo by putting Festival International (and eventually other local festivals) on the road to becoming a “zero waste” event!  Anyone who has spent any time at Festival International (isn’t that all of us?) knows that most of the food is served on styrofoam plates or containers. But did you know that styrofoam never goes away and that these food containers can neither be recycled nor recovered in any existing system? We bet you definitely didn’t know that there are compostable equivalents to all the styrofoam plates, bowls, and clamshells used today. In fact, one such plant-based item is made from sugar cane bagasse, a byproduct of sugarcane mills that we have an abundance of here in South Louisiana.

Depending on the product (plate, bowl, clamshell, etc), the cost difference between styrofoam and bagasse can range from nothing to fifty cents. We know this can be a significant ask of vendors, particularly those not used to this idea of “zero waste”. We will work with Festival International vendors to help them source materials, and, where it might be a barrier, use 24HCP funding to cover a portion of the difference in cost.

This effort will be paired with a fully-backed Festival International marketing effort promoting FIL’s move away from styrofoam. Vendors who elect to participate will be designated in the FIL app and at their vendor booths with the FIL Geaux Green logo.

Future Plan:

The beauty of plant based materials comes full circle if you are able to capture them once Festival-goers have finished eating. These materials, along with any food residue and leftovers, can be sent to compost at a right-sized and managed facility. When managed properly and mixed with other organic material, oxygen, and water; all of this plant-based waste will break back down into healthy, rich soil!  It is very important that no other materials get mixed in though, so we would start with collection in select areas only (i.e. Parc San Souci) and follow Louisiana Football’s model of hand sorting compost after each event to make sure that no other waste materials end up in the compost pile. This work would be completed by volunteers similar to the volunteers who handle recycling at Festival Acadien.

Project Details

Team Leader: Monica Rowand
Funded Date: November 9, 2019
Funding Amount: $3,000
Location: Lafayette, LA

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