04 Apr Mission Moment: Sr. Rosario Endowment for St. Lucy’s Child Development Center
Of a great many casualties in our area due to COVID and Hurricane Ida, the Bayou Area Children’s Foundation and the Louis Infant Center, unfortunately, had to close their doors this past June. Houma attorneys Mike and the late Louis St. Martin’s vision years ago was for a home for small toddlers and young children who were unable to be placed in a foster home. However, with the continued lack of government funding and budget cuts at the state and federal levels, the sustainability of the home became difficult in recent years.
However, Mr. Mike St. Martin and their board created an endowment to keep the mission and vision of the Louis Infant Center alive and named it after one of its founders, Sr. Rosario O’Connell, who died in 2016. This new endowment will create sustainability for St. Lucy’s families and provide tuition assistance for qualified families to ensure they have access to child care.
“The mission of the Catholic Foundation is to provide sustainability for ministries of the diocese. When Mr. Mike St. Martin and Mrs. Paige Marmande began discussing with me their challenges and closing the doors of Louis Infant Center, we knew right away that we needed to keep the mission and vision of the Louis Infant Center alive,” said Amy Ponson, Executive Director of the Catholic Foundation of South Louisiana. “It was a perfect connection to St. Lucy’s, which has 45+ students, and a large percentage of those families are in the low-income level. Mike and Paige have a huge heart for children and making affordable child care available, which is why the creation of the Sr. Rosario Endowment was created. The generosity of our community continues to grow abundantly and it is an honor to foster their generosity and transform the lives of these families tomorrow and long into the future.”
For more information about The Catholic Foundation of South Louisiana and how your gifts can support your parish, school or favorite ministry, please contact our office at (985) 850-3116 or aponson@htdiocese.org.