Bayoulands Adoptive & Foster Parents Association was founded in February 2005. They are a group of Foster and Adoptive Families that are working with the Office of Community Services to help our families with education, support and help to give our children in the community a better way of livelihood. They have helped our community in many ways after the hurricanes last year by provideing food and supplies to those that needed it. They work with the Louisiana Foster and adoptive Parents Assn. and the National Foster and adoptive parents assn. They are trying to help make everyone aware of the great need to become foster and adoptive parents if possible, because of our great need to provide homes for children in our state that are without homes. Also, they attend special education seminars to help educate their people and bring their findings back to their association to help all of our families and children to get answers, or know where to go to find the answers. This helps the organization help the children with special needs, and gives them more confidence to take better care of the communities' children. The Office of Community Services and their workers are a tremendous help with information and providing them with the avenues to get to the answers we need.

They are trying to have an annual Christmas Party to reach as many of our Children in the system as possible in our area. Last year they had a wonderful party with the tremendous help of the community by providing gifts, decorations and money. They are greatly appreciated and in our eyes were angels to be so generous and giving. It made so many children's day, Christmas and life everything that they needed. Some had never experienced anything like that so they were amazed and given such hope that they may never have had if it weren't for the great people of our area. They reached more than 200 children last year and we hope to be able to continue with the communities help. This Year they are trying to get Educational toys like Vtech and leap frog for all the children since most are developmentally delayed, and would benefit better from this.

In the past they have had Easter egg hunts for the children, fun day out and many activities for them and they'd like to continue this. They would also like these events to be annual. In the future they would like to do things like family day out and have more events for the holidays so that all the children could know and enjoy the meanings of them. They will also, like to continue to have fund raisers to help out with these projects. They will be having a Winter raffle ticket sale coming soon. Thank you for all your support.

If you could like to donate to our Christmas party or have more questions, please call one of our Board members at: Cyndi Pellegrin (985) 594-9806, Monica Miller (985) 532-8257 or Michele Peters (985) 853-0631. And if you are interested in becoming a Foster/Adoptive Parent, please contact OCS at1-800-748-7755. The offices of Cummunity Services is a great inspiration, and also are in need of donations to give back to our children and familes throughout the year. Thank you all for your generousity and especially to our members that make all this possible.