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Sister Rosario Endowment created
LAWRENCE CHATAGNIER/BAYOU CATHOLIC
The Sister Rosario Endowment will provide sustainability for the families of the St. Lucy Child Development Center in Houma. A check in the amount of $1,079,700 was presented to diocesan leadership to create the endowment.
Due to policy changes and funding deficiencies at the state level, the Louis Children’s Crisis Center in Houma closed this past June, along with the Bayou Area Children’s Foundation Inc., whose mission was to provide buildings, maintenance and insurance for the Center’s buildings. 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.
Mike St. Martin and the boards of the Louis Children’s Crisis Center and the Bayou Area Children’s Foundation Inc. have created an endowment to keep the mission and vision of the Louis Children’s Crisis Center alive; and they have named it after one of its founders, Sister Rosario O’Connell, S.H.Sp., who died in 2016. This new endowment will create sustainability for the families of St. Lucy Child Development Center in Houma and provide tuition assistance for qualified families to ensure they have access to child care.
“The mission of the Catholic Foundation of South Louisiana is to provide sustainability for ministries of the diocese. When Mike St. Martin and Paige Marmande began discussing with me their challenges and closing the doors of Louis Children’s Crisis Center, we knew right away that we needed to keep the mission and vision of the Louis Children’s Crisis Center alive,” says Amy Ponson, executive director of the Foundation. “It was a perfect connection to the St. Lucy Child Development Center, which has over 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 Sister 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.”
A tour of the St. Lucy Child Development Center was held in conjunction with the check presentation, which took place recently. BC
