Students from a school in Kansas have returned to Acadiana to help with some projects identified by Catholic Charities of Acadiana.
Students from St. James Academy in Lenexa, Kansas, have visited Acadiana to help CCA for years, often following storms or hurricanes, when folks need help. According to Catholic Charities, they've been coming here since 2017 to work with Rebuilding Together Acadiana. Every year, students and faculty come to help with rebuilding projects.
This year, they worked on some handicap ramps for some families in Abbeville who needed them; they built a ramp and one home and finished another.
“Year after year, the students from St. James Academy show up ready to serve,” said Ben Broussard, Chief of External Affairs at Catholic Charities of Acadiana. “Their commitment is incredible. They recognize the inherent dignity of our neighbors who are suffering and respond to real needs with compassion, humility, and love. We are deeply grateful for their partnership and their witness to what faith in action looks like.”
In addition to their work on the ramps, the group is supporting hunger relief efforts by sorting food at FoodNet Food Bank from the annual Food for Families Food Drive, and helping clean out and pack up two homes in preparation for Harvest Call, another committed volunteer group scheduled to serve the Acadiana area in 2026.
ABOUT CATHOLIC CHARITIES OF ACADIANA: Catholic Charities of Acadiana has served as an organizer of charity in South Louisiana for more than 50 years. Since 1973, the organization has cared for the sacred gift of all human life, especially the most vulnerable, through programs that address homelessness, hunger, and poverty across Acadiana. Its work represents a response to the Gospel call to live out the corporal works of mercy: feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, offering hospitality to the homeless, caring for the sick, visiting the imprisoned, and burying the dead.
