Rotary powers peace advocacy

Rounding out the month of November, the Ville Platte Rotary Club heard from the son of one of its members about CLECO growing the company to better serve the communities as well as hearing about the upcoming season of Advent and about the benefits of Camp RYLA.
Interim CEO of CLECO Bill Fontenot, son of Rotarian Leonard Fontenot, spoke at the meeting on November 21 about the changes within the company to help it grow since it was purchased by investors 18 months ago.
According to Fontenot, the new owners are “not trying to buy this company and leave it like it is. They want to take it to another level of operational excellence.”
“There was a recent announcement where we are investing $130 million and changing out of all the company’s software,” he continued. “You are served today by more technology than you have ever been in the distribution system so that we can become more efficient and drive for operational excellence. We will continue to modernize the processes as well as the systems that we have in place.”
Fontenot went on to touch about other areas of the company where the new owners are investing in its future.
“We have nearly doubled the expenses on tree trimming in the communities that we serve,” Fontenot said. “There is nothing that impacts the liability of our system more than trees. Organizational transformation is really about becoming more efficiently productive in how we do things.”
Another area is generating power. “We are going through a process where we are looking to what the future generation resources will be for our company,” he said. “There’s a lot of aging generation infrastructure in Louisiana, and ultimately it’ll have to be replaced. Optimal solutions for us are cleaner solutions.”
“In Louisiana, the concept of being green has not been prevalent, but we believe by the time Generations X, Y, and Millennials become decision makers that there will be more of a push to decarbonize our state,” he continued. “We’re in that process of evaluating what that generation will be in the future.”
Earlier in the meeting, Rotary President Wayne Vidrine announced “we’ve made arrangements to be relocating to the Family Life Center.” He added, “We were able to work out a deal with both Wilda Edwards and Cafe de LaSalle to provide catering on a rotating weekly basis. We think we have something that’s going to work, and we think that it’s going to be a better fit with a little more variety.”
A week later, Pastor of Our Lady Queen of All Saints Catholic Church Fr. Mitch Guidry spoke to the Rotary Club about the upcoming season of Advent, which is a time of preparing for Christ’s coming.
“As Christians we are going to celebrate the birth of Christ 2000 years ago in Bethlehem on Christmas Day, but we also believe the Lord is going to return at the end of time,” he said. “It is our belief at the end that all things will be consummated and perfected when Lord Jesus returns, and so we are preparing ourselves for two things.”
“Either our own personal lives on Earth are going to come to an end and then we go meet Him in judgment, or He’s going to come and meet us for judgment at the end of time,” he continued. “The question is are we prepared for those things.”
Fr. Guidry told the Rotary Club that the answers to this question lie in the virtues of faith, hope, and love.
“Regardless of denomination, all of us are called to have faith in God- the One who created us, the One who has redeemed us, and the One who made us in His own image and likeness,” he said. “The God we believe in is a God of love, so along with faith comes love.”
He used this past Sunday’s Gospel from Matthew 25 to illustrate this point. “Jesus says whatever we do for the least of our brothers and sisters we essentially are doing for Him since we believe His presence is in every person,” Fr. Guidry said. “All of this gives us hope.”
“If we are a people of hope, then we should not fear death nor should we fear the Second Coming,” he continued. “If we have lived out our lives in faith and lived out our lives in love, then we know we have nothing to worry about. In fact we should be looking with expectation to the Second Coming. If we love Him, then we want to see Him face-to-face finally after all these years of our existence.”
Visiting the Rotary meeting were past District 6200 Governor Mark Hayes and Assistant District Governor Tim McNabb who were looking into the possibility of using Chicot State Park to host Camp RYLA which is the Rotary Youth Leadership Awards. McNabb also serves as the chairperson for RYLA.
“We get the cream of the crop from South Louisiana,” said McNabb. “This is not a troubled teen deal, and this is not a run around and canoeing and fishing camp. This is an educational training and corporate team building boot camp for these kids. We teach these kids everything from leadership on the basics of Rotary to what it takes to become a leader in their community, state, and world.”
“Two years ago, we added to the camp a Rotary Peace Advocacy,” he continued. “It is a program that is sanctioned by Rotary. These kids are not only a graduate of RYLA, they are certified peace advocates for their schools. Basically what we’re teaching is purposeful listening and purposeful speaking and how to use peer pressure to de-escalate violence in the schools.”
Rotarian Steve Phillips ended the meeting with an update on the construction project at Sacred Heart of Jesus Catholic Church in Ville Platte. He said that the scaffolding should come down by Friday and hey should be able to have church for Christmas.”