OPERATION MAGI BRINGS CHRISTMAS TO HOMELESS CHILDREN

Every year, the Kiwanis Club of Lafayette (KOL) treats homeless children to a Christmas Shopping spree at Wal-Mart. This event is coordinated between KOL, the Lafayette Parish School System (LPSS) Homeless Children and Youth Education Program and WalMart. Each year we experience the joy of Christmas through the eyes of community children - it is the favorite service project of the club year after year. Club members bring several dozen disadvantaged and homeless children from the Lafayette area to Wal-Mart for a Christmas shopping spree. The children are given a budget and accompanied through the store as they select gifts for themselves and their families. Each year we are humbled and moved by the enormous need, generosity and gratitude that our young shoppers demonstrate.

Most of the children who come to Magi live in transition. They move from relative to relative to friend and around. If the LPSS Homeless Children program wasn't in place to try to keep their school experience stable, the children could go to four or five different schools and back in one year. Some children come from out of town to live with relatives because there are no jobs in other areas of the state for their parents. Most of the time the children are sent here and the parents stay to try to make things work out in their home towns (or just the dad stays and the mom and kids leave). That separation is tough on these kids who already live on the margin.

Some families are in such dire straights that they live in motels that agencies pay for. Often, LPSS and other groups have to cobble together the funds to pay for motels until space opens up in a shelter. Then, some of the children are runaway youth. For some reason, they cannot stay in their own home. Sometimes, they live with older friends or siblings in their apartments. Usually, they crash on the sofas in their schoolmates' homes. LPSS hears a lot from these adults who provide safe places for their children's friends.

LPSS also provides for children awaiting permanent placement through foster care. These placements take a long time (especially with older kids).

The Kiwanis Club of Lafayette hopes, through Operation Magi, to made a small difference in the lives of these children by bringing a bit of Christmas joy to their lives.