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After School Program

With parent approval and cooperation with local schools where the children attend, the children enrolled in our mentoring program are dropped off by the bus at a local church which has allowed us the use of rooms for our program.

Once the children arrive they are given a little playtime and a healthy snack. They are taught life skills, Biblical principles, as well as crafts and various enjoyable games geared to instruct in teamwork rather than competitive independence. Our program ends each day with homework help and tutoring in the areas of greatest need. Each day’s program begins at 3:15 p.m., Monday through Thursday, and ends at 6:00 p.m. as the children are returned home.

Our goal is to work with the schools, teachers, and parents to see that each child receives the best possible advantage of succeeding in all areas of life.

KIDZCLUB Incentive Program

As children attend the KidzClub Program, they are rewarded with ministry play money for positive behavior, attendance, doing homework, having the proper attitude and relations toward adults and peers. The children are allowed to make purchases in the KidzClub General Store from items donated by individuals and organizations. All children have their own personal, in-house “bank account” where they are taught to deposit their money. When they are able to shop in the General Store, they are required to write out a check for their purchases and to keep track of their account balances in their check registers.

This portion of our program is valuable in teaching basic life skills of money management, trust in the banking system, and the experience and satisfaction of earning money rather than depending on others to provide their needs. As they purchase items in the General Store with their own earnings, the children begin to appreciate and care about what they have personally earned. We have had children who also used their play money to buy something for their family members or one of the program volunteers. Every aspect of this after-school mentoring program is designed to help the children develop excellent character and life skills for a great future.

Summer Programs

In cooperation with local churches, we have had vacation Bible school programs offered to the children of Ile des Cannes apartment complex. Our goal starting in the summer of 2009 is to have a full summer program where we will provide tutoring and various activities to keep the children occupied and productive during the summer months. As a public school teacher emphasized, during the summer time the children have difficulty retaining what was taught throughout the school year. It is our hope that we can help the children maintain significant academic skills, as well as provide enjoyable recreational “field trips” such as swimming, roller skating, playing in the park, and other appropriate activities.

All Rights Reserved 2021

Dear future Partner,

            My name is Kenneth Hargrave and I am the founder/director of the above 501-c-3 non-profit organization (EIN # 87-0769700). I started this organization in December 2006, with a desire to help children in the Ile des Cannes apartment complex with their educational, personal and spiritual growth through after school and summer programs. As we focused on children, it became apparent that we needed to help the whole family since the family dynamic affected the children directly.  
            Throughout the last 15 years, we have partnered with various organizations throughout Lafayette to bring the residents various opportunities to strengthen and help families. Like parenting classes, nutrition classes, medical outreaches, Book Mobil, food distribution, adult ESL classes etc.
            Due to Covid-19 and a lack of volunteers, we had to postpone our after-school and summer programs. We are presently looking into partnering with a local governmental agency to be able to go into local schools to help students from 3rd-8th grade with life skills training. This agency provides all training, curriculum and accountability necessary to help children succeed in this program. Having and after-school program with volunteers is a blessing but limited. This partnership will allow us to fulfil the desire in our heart to help children, at the same time providing a residual income to resume or programs, but with Certified teachers who understand all the curriculum benefitting the students in a more wholistic educational aspect.
            Presently we are partnered with Smile Community Action which provide ESL classes so parents can at least help their children with homework and communicate in English. Also, Spanish classes to help people to communicate with the Latin community. We partnered with Second Harvest food Bank and also operate a food pantry, to help with food insecurities and because the apartment complex is considered a food dessert. We are presently helping 50-60 families per week, with an average of 10-15 new families weekly from the Lafayette parish area not just Ile des Cannes. As of October, 29th we completed our first year at the food pantry. Even with a slow start, we helped 438 families with over 147,000 pounds of food and various items. Second Harvest has provided us food as well as helped us connect with local vendors like Walmart, Target, Costco, World Foods and Aldi’s to provide additional food to families. We project 600 families and 250,00 pounds of food in the upcoming year.
            We ask for your support to enlarge the amount of families served and the amount of food given. Monetary donations, both one time or continuous would be appreciated to help us with our continued and ever-growing cost to operate, as well as food drives to help us with filling our pantry so we can provide food to families. Thanks for your consideration in this matter and I hope we can partner together to help families in the Lafayette parish area!!

Sincerely,
Kenneth Hargrave