Last week, dozens of people gathered in the parking lot of an Opelousas shopping center that is currently home to a Family Dollar, an Arc of Acadiana resale shop, and not much else.
That will all change in the coming weeks and months, as the center is slated to be completely redesigned and transformed as the home of Hope for Opelousas’s new high school center.
The commercial spaces and a planned food truck kiosk will be maintained as an ongoing revenue source for the nonprofit, which intends to double the amount of students it can serve through tutoring, enrichment, ministry, and internship and entrepreneurship opportunities.
Hope for Opelousas is structured as a wrap-around support organization that works closely with students in the program, and their families. Founded in 2008 with the goal of helping children who are living in poverty, the Opelousas campus is clustered in several homes at 330 E. Madison St., right across from the shopping center that will become Hope Plaza.
At last week’s groundbreaking, executive director Loren Carriere said that the acquisition was the result of years of planning around how to grow the program intentionally and serve more students. Currently, more than 300 Opelousas students are on the organization’s waitlist. Once accepted, students tend to stay with the program for their entire educational careers — leaving limited space to welcome more kids and teens.
A groundbreaking was held for the new Hope for Opelousas Center, Thursday, January 15, 2026 in Opelousas.
“Our existing spaces were already full. We needed more space. We needed more funding. We had leads on spaces that would accommodate growth for elementary and junior high, but the final piece of the puzzle was to figure out what to do for high school,” said Carriere.
“It’s not my job to make anything happen. It’s my job to pray and then to work, and then to watch God make things happen. And so I remember walking out, walking down the street, and seeing the shopping center for the first time. I thought, ‘Well, could that work?'”
It could. He got in touch with owner Jared Brown, whose father, Herbert Brown, built the shopping center at 718 S. Union St. in the 1950s. As it turned out, Jared Brown was happy to throw his support behind Hope for Opelousas by selling the building, and even contributing to the revitalization project.
Hope for Opelousas community members and funders were also excited to support the work, which as of November was fully funded at over $2 million. Construction on the front facade had already begun during the Jan. 15 groundbreaking, and the brand new high school space inside will be transformed with classrooms, hangout spaces, a computer lab and more.
“HFO is the gold standard, and a best kept secret,” said Todd Mouton, executive director of the Pugh Family Foundation, which provided support for the Hope Plaza campaign.
“They almost have their own recipe. The stuff they do in the summer, with the adventure programs — it’s just what every child needs, wants and deserves. When the kids come from school and get their snacks and head to their different houses to get tutoring, you see how it feels so natural and just so high quality.”
Another supporter, Chuck LaGrange with the Stuller Family Foundation, noted that investing in HFO’s work is a way to invest in the success of Acadiana’s future workforce.
“They are actually closing those opportunity gaps, and putting these kids in a place where they become part of the talent pipeline and can have gainful employment. That creates a support structure for their own family stability. Overall, that just strengthens the economic resilience of us as a state in a lot of these rural communities,” LaGrange said.
Maiya Robertson leads in prayer during the groundbreaking for the new Hope for Opelousas Center, Thursday, January 15, 2026 in Opelousas.
For the students and alumni of the program, Hope for Opelousas has offered something that’s hard to put in a strategic plan. They say that their involvement in the program went beyond tutoring and trips — HFO gave them a sense of hope, belonging, and support for each season of their lives.
“I think it’s the environment when you walk in,” said HFO alum and current LSU Eunice nursing student Maiya Robertson, who led the opening prayer at the groundbreaking. “Even now when I’m not a student there, I walk in and they still treat me like I belong there.”
Another alum, Jaylen Boyd, said that Hope for Opelousas helped him enter LSU’s industrial engineering program through study support, ACT prep, and the college application grind. He said that the program’s impact on his life went well beyond academic bolstering — and now he likes to pay it forward.
“Without Hope, I wouldn’t have even been exposed, I maybe wouldn’t have even been in college at LSU. They broadened my horizons, showed me the collegiate experience. I got to travel and go to both coasts with Hope, and they’re still there if I need advice about stuff in college.
“You get out of Hope was you put in. Now that I’m in college in Baton Rouge, I go back and forth, and I always stop by to just try to pour into the kids as much as I can. Talk to the guys, make sure they’re on the right track. I just want to make sure that the kids down there are getting that advice from somebody that was in their position.”
