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Christiana Baptiste, 4, unwraps a Christmas present during the party on Friday.

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Photo on the right is Lindsay Mencacci Schexnider, who helped organize the party, picking up presents that were not opened at the party.

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Mandy Hebert walks through the groups of presents before they were going to be handed out.

Vermilion Parish helps foster children

Children eat gumbo, unwrap donated presents at Harvest Time

The Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) hosted their first Christmas Party Project for children and families in the program on Friday; a project that took two months to organize with hopes to grow.
Stacey Mire, supervisor for the Department of Children and Family Services, wanted to do more in her career in helping foster children and families. After realizing that Lafayette had several community and church support, she wanted to do the same for Vermilion Parish.
“Being an employee of DCFS, I could not organize this project myself” she says “I knew exactly who I wanted for the job; Lindsay Mencacci Schexnider who is a social worker through Abbeville General.”
About a year ago, Schexnider reached out to Harvest Time for support as well as parishioners asking to sponsor a family while Mire began working with Foster Friends in Lafayette in efforts to collaborate with Schexnider in getting an organization together in the parish for the children and families that are involved with DCFS.
“A lot of times, the kids need prom dresses, sports gear or birthday gifts” Schexnider says “Just a small bit to bring them smiles.” The organization hopes to do events like this several times a year.
Every year, the organization plans to have a Christmas party with games and food for the children as well as things on their wish lists. “This is actually our first event here so far. But for the kids’ birthdays there may be a parishioner who has to movie tickets that they cannot attend, so they would typically donate it and if that suits a wish list item, we will issue that as a birthday gift.”
The state only gives a recreation fee, which pays for the basic needs of a child in the system, so some of the kids don’t have much extra for holidays, birthdays, or sports.
By spreading the word, the turnout was pretty amazing, according the pair. “The community has helped so much and we cannot thank them enough.”
To prepare, each home was visited, wish lists for each child were collected, and a plan set into motion. Schexnider then went to each business and asked if they wanted to sponsor one child, or one family, and the response was incredible. Lindsay says “The businesses were thanking us for doing this for their community as we were thanking them. Every business helped us out.”
“It means the world to me because I am a social worker, I see what is missing in their lives, and we have all needed a little extra support from somewhere, and we are here to make that happen and to give our neighbors a little joy.” Lindsay Schexnider
“I think that for a long time, bigger cities have parish offices for things like this with support and recruitment efforts, and that’s something that this area doesn’t have and we want to change that. Every community needs it. In my 28 years with DCFS it has always been a struggle to get gifts for these children and thought I wasn’t doing enough. And now, we are here. We are a smaller parish with a lot of love.” Stacey Mire

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