Since we gained our non-profit status on February 24, 2025, our founding board members, Amy LeBlanc, Alex Pitre, and Rhondalyn Edwards, have thoughtfully crafted our goals and mission to work with Acadiana’s animal welfare needs. We are fortunate to be based in a parish with such successful shelters and rescues. And we are doubly fortunate that the Lafayette area has so much community support for community-focused projects. We knew from day one that we would need as much mentoring as financial support to make this dream a reality. And Lafayette has not let us down!
In March, meowWOOF attended our first fundraising event at Acadiana Animal Aid’s Bark in the Park, raising $120 from enthusiastic event goers. We knew we just had to jump in feet first and talk to people directly. We had as much fun spending the day at the park as we did designing and making all the signs and decorations for our little booth.
Finishing the Accelerate Northside program through LEED Center UL gave us some extra fire in our belly and renewed our belief that we could do this. Robin McMillan of McMillan’s Pub offered a generous partnership for us to occupy the empty portion of McMillan’s lot. Once we knew our spot to sit and stay, we started working with Melissa Llewellyn at Lines Made Simple to throw around ideas with a professional, so we could set our fundraising goals and material sourcing for our modular concept. We quickly got two 40ft and one 20ft shipping containers donated by Logan Lowry of Logan Industries, LLC, & Acadiana Automotive Group. The last three containers were just donated this week!
While we’re still under construction, our foster housing capacity is low. So, we continue to focus on other community efforts. We had our interview with 24-Hour Citizen’s Project for a mobile adoption and education project. Kitten and Puppy University (KPU) will bring adoptable young cats and dogs out into the community as an extremely cute vehicle for pet ownership education as well as adoption. Amy created a pet food drive to feed 15 dogs & 18 cats for The Hub Lafayette, Urban Ministries homeless members for Give a Dog a Bone Week, providing 840 cups for dogs & 328 cups for cats. That effort has led to our new project to add a Furry Friends’ Pantry to the Community Fridge at McMillan’s Pub. (We’ll announce when that is available for donations.) We continue to look for ways that we can empower our community members to be the best animal caretakers they can be.
The list of local networking groups, professionals in various industries, businesses, and volunteers who have given invaluable assistance and advice grows every day, such as Connections Professional Networking for Women, Carlos Lerma with Accolades I.T., The Quick Books Queen Jennifer, Master Welder Jeff Hernandez, the entire Acadiana Animal Aid team, and on and on. All that said, we would be fools not to have a special thank you to Developing Lafayette whose post got us the attention we needed to elevate our progress to the next level and led to a feature on KATC TV3 with Christina Mondragon. We can not thank y’all enough!