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Boy Scout goes for Eagle Scout rank with school supply drive for Haitian children

FILE - This Feb. 4, 2013 file photo shows a close up of a Boy Scout uniform badge during a news conference in front of the Boy Scouts of America headquarters in Irving, Texas. A team of lawyers filed a lawsuit on Monday, Jan. 6, 2020, in federal court in Washington, D.C., seeking to establish the nation’s capital as a venue for men across the U.S. to sue the Boy Scouts of America for allegedly failing to protect them from long-ago sexual abuse at the hands of scoutmasters and other scout leaders. (AP Photo/Tony Gutierrez, File)

LAFAYETTE, La. (KLFY) — A local Boy Scout is looking to make the jump to scouting’s highest honors with a school supply drive for needy Haitian children.

Caden Ardoin, 17, of Lafayette, is a member of Boy Scout Troop 162. As part of earning his Eagle Scout rank, he is working on collecting supplies for Respire Haiti, a Lafayette-based non-profit that provides educational and health care services in Gressier, Haiti. 


Many of the children to be helped are known as “restaveks,” or a child who is sent by their parents to work for a host family as a domestic servant because the parents cannot support the children. Some people refer to the restavek system as child slavery, and many of the children Ardoin is seeking to help have come from those backgrounds.

Ardoin and Respire Haiti have several collection boxes around Lafayette for donors to leave their supplies, as seen in the flyer below.