BATON ROUGE — Several members of the nationally ranked LSU softball team volunteered at the St. Vincent de Paul Dining Room on Monday afternoon as part of the Shaquille O’Neal CHAMPS/Life Skills program.
Easton Tiger Classic Most Valuable Player Shannon Stein, senior Dee Dee Henderson, freshman Casey Faile and freshman Jessica Mouse helped prepare brown back dinners for the homeless. The quartet also baked cookies to hand out to those at the Dining Room for a meal.
The service work is part of the softball team’s theme of respect in all areas of life, including personally, academically and in the community. The program has taken the theme to heart and done more community service hours this season than any previous softball team.
The Society of St. Vincent de Paul is an international, non-profit, charitable organization that has a rich history of service to the needy. Its mission, through person-to-person contact, mass feeding, sheltering and other channels, encompasses every form of aid which alleviates suffering and promotes dignity and integrity. All races, creeds, colors, origins, castes, opinions and genders are served.
In 1982, the St. Vincent de Paul Society of Baton Rouge opened the St. Vincent de Paul Dining Room, which is now the number one hot meal provider in the community. The dining room serves a hot, nutritious meal every day of the year, as well as a brown bag supper Monday through Friday.
The Dining Room serve the homeless, elderly, transient and poor and the brown bag suppers are often the reason many area citizens in need don’t go to bed hungry. If someone is in need of a hot meal, they can go to the Dining Room between 11:30 a.m. and 1:00 p.m. No questions asked.
The CHAMPS (Challenging Athletes Minds for Personal Success)/Life Skills Program was designed by the NCAA to help student-athletes realize higher academic achievement, increase likelihood of graduation and enter a chosen profession with a higher level of vision, knowledge, motivation, self-responsibility and greater overall success. In Spring 2003, the CHAMPS/ Life Skills Program honored one of LSU’s most memorable graduates, Shaquille O’Neal, by naming the program after him.