Community Impact

Identifying the Need

Following a backpack drive in July that resulted in 800 outfitted backpacks being donated to local families in need of replacing their children’s backpacks to meet new school safety requirements, CBHS identified another opportunity to give back to the community in time for the Thanksgiving holiday.

Recognizing the importance of families coming together, CBHS expressed interest in partnering with a local organization hosting an annual Community Unity Day to see how it could support the mission of uniting families in Bogalusa. ADAPT, INC, which stands for All Deserve Advocacy, Prevention, and Treatment, is a non-profit organization in Bogalusa that offers sexual assault and domestic violence services, personal and pre-employment drug screens, individual or group counseling and a variety of prevention programs for the betterment of the community. Its annual Community Unity Day is an event sponsored to create awareness around prevention activities and community resources offered to the families of Bogalusa.

Meeting the Need

On Saturday, November 4, CBHS sponsored an activity center at Community Unity Day to facilitate games and entertainment to families participating in the event. As part of the games for children, CBHS donated $20 McDonalds gift cards to put smiles on the faces of children who stopped by to participate in the activity center.

In addition to the activity center for children, CBHS featured a station aimed at “Bridging Families Together”, an initiative to donate groceries to Bogalusa families in need so they could come together on Thanksgiving. Throughout the 4-hour event, CBHS was able to donate grocery gift cards to 100 families with a value of $100 each to help offset the cost of bringing their loved ones together around the Thanksgiving table. To not only bless local families around Thanksgiving, but also benefit local businesses in the community, CBHS purchased the grocery cards from two non-chain grocery markets that operate within Bogalusa to ensure that the money donated to local families was also spent within the local economy. With 100% employee volunteers facilitating the activities and donation distributions, the CBHS team was proud to play a role in community betterment within Bogalusa and to help drive awareness to ADAPT’s mission, “to unite the community by providing resources and implementing prevention, intervention, and post-intervention strategies to address the causal factors that lead to sexual assault, violence, substance abuse, and other problem behaviors”. CBHS will continue to identify opportunities like these as we seek to not only be a great employer in Bogalusa but also be a key contributor to community initiatives that unite the families who call Bogalusa home.

The inspiration for our Backpacks for Bogalusa project came when the city of Bogalusa, Louisiana, announced that students would be required to use clear, mesh, or see-through backpacks for the 2023–2024 school year. We recognized the financial burden this new requirement could put on parents who needed to replace their children’s backpacks, so we made a substantial donation of more than 800 backpacks and school supplies for local students.

We first offered backpacks to CBHS employees who have children or grandchildren in Bogalusa schools. We then donated the remaining backpacks to students at a back-to-school bash hosted by the mayor at a local park. The initiative was a great success and is just one of the ways that CBHS demonstrates a commitment to its communities and its employees.