A Bossier City teen is using her senior project to make a difference in the lives of local children in foster care.
Kaylee Roblow-Law, 17, is working with the Volunteers for Youth Justice to collect donations for Geaux Bags, a local outreach project that provides children in foster care a basic bag of essentials to help them get through the first night in their new home. Each bag contains travel sized toiletries, pajamas or a change of clothes, new underwear or diapers and an age appropriate comfort item.
The Louisiana Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) states there are more than 4,000 children in foster care, each of whom need a safe, loving home. Some of those children are placed with foster families after leaving abusive and neglect situations, often arriving with nothing but the clothes on their back.
For this Parkway senior, it’s a sight she sees often. Kaylee’s family is a certified foster family, something her parents decided to do about six years ago.
“I’m doing this because I see a lot of kids come into our home with none of the basic necessities,” she said. “Geaux Bags are something that is desperately needed and in need of community support.”
Children in need of foster homes range in age from infants to teenagers. Geaux Bags are designed to supply each child with the items they specifically need.
“They often leave everything behind to go into a stranger’s home,” Kaylee explained. “It’s not their fault and it’s not their choice to be put into the situation.”
The Geaux Bag program is in need of new travel sized toiletries, new underwear/diapers, new pajamas for boys and girls, and age appropriate comfort items (toy, blanket, etc.).
Geaux Bags will be stored at DCFS parish offices and available to use when they deliver a child into foster parent’s care.
Kaylee said this senior project means more to her than just a grade at school.
“I know what foster kids go through,” she said. “Most people don’t realize they come in with nothing. They don’t see the little things that I see. It takes just one person to change the life of a child.”
Kaylee, however, doesn’t plan to end her efforts at the conclusion of her senior project. Her goal is to make foster care awareness an every day occurrence.
The greatest life lesson, Kaylee said, is this – “You might be temporary in their lives, they might be temporary in yours, but there is nothing temporary about the love or the lesson.”
The Geaux Bags program is a year-round service/mission project and donations can be made at Moppet Shoppe, 4840 Line Ave, in Shreveport, and Learning Express Toys of Shreveport, 5733 Youree Dr.
For more information or to donate, contact coordinator K.C. Kilpatrick Stone at 318-550-8785.
