Programs
Community Outreach
The staff in our Office are strongly encouraged to give back to the community we serve through a variety of avenues. These efforts include:
Junior Achievement
Staff Assistants have volunteered and taught six week JA curriculums to seventh grade classes in Weed & Seed schools. The students learned money management, budgeting, and other important concepts and presented certificates to those who completed the course. More recent JA participation by the Office involves the Ground Hog Job Shadow Day Program, in which high schoolers follow AUSAs around while they work to see and understand the value of education in future employment.
Rivarde Juvenile Detention Center
Assistant U.S. Attorneys along with other, local lawyers and law enforcement, provide law-related education to incarcerated juveniles at Rivarde in Jefferson Parish. AUSAs volunteer to teach lesson plans and materials provided by The Center for Law & Civic Education, which help the youths demonstrate to themselves that there are alternatives to engaging in criminal behavior and that the consequences for continuing such activity are onerous and lifelong.
Red Ribbon Week
One week each October is observed in memory of DEA Special Agent Enrique Camarena, who was murdered in 1985 by drug traffickers. During Red Ribbon Week, a "Drug Free America" is promoted through programs presented to schools and community organizations by teams of AUSAs, federal agents, probation officers and local police.
Christmas in October
The Office also volunteers resources and personnel to the Christmas in October program, during which an elderly or lower income family's home is repaired and painted to make the residence a pleasant place in which to live.
Everybody Wins
The term "Power Lunch" has been given a new meaning through this program which is devoted to increasing children's prospects for success in school and in life through one-to-one reading. For the past two years, AUSA's have been spending their Thursday lunch-hours meeting and reading with students at Craig Elementary School in Treme, part of our Weed and Seed area.