Dr Chastant donates a bike per school for Iberia Parish, Vermillion Parish, and St. Mary Parish to promote good grades. When a student gets the honor roll they get their name placed into a drawing. If they have straight A’s they get their name put into drawing twice. At the end of the school year the school draws a name for the winner. Dr Chastant tries to promote everyone trying to get the prize where as a scholarship is for someone who already does their best.
Kid Id is a program that Dr Chastant started years ago. We get volunteers to go to area schools and take a fingerprint and digital images of the second grade class. If a child becomes missing we have an action plan to help locate the child after an abduction. We work with the local sheriff’s office collecting the information so when the time comes and the information is needed they know how to retrieve information. Dr Chastant’s working on getting this nationally so he can help find many kids across the country.
Promoting Dental Health Month in February came about with our new Brown Bag Contest. Local grocery stores donate paper bags that we deliver to Iberia Parish and Vermillion Parish schools. The kids draw, color, decorate bags with information on dental health. We then have the bags brought to our office to have an outside official decide on winner by age groups. We send the paper bags back to the local grocery stores to use the bags to package their customers supplies showing off all the kids hard work. Winners receive gifts and recognition according to age groups.
Community efforts of Robert B Chastant
1. Initiated Christmas Wishes which is a program for needy children all over Iberia Parish to attend a party with lunch, magicians, entertainment and Santa giving toys to each and gifts to bring home to siblings. He developed the idea, raised money and was even Santa. The project has gotten so large that was handed off to the Iberia Cajun Kiwanis Club
2. He developed the Leadership Scholarship presented to graduating senior providing a portion of tuition to college for 8 students per year equaling over 40,000 dollars during the years of its existence.
3. He replaced the scholarship with a bicycle program. This program is geared to all elementary school of Iberia, Vermillion, and St Mary Parishes. Over 120 bicycles are given by him to all elementary schools in these parishes to be given to a student for maintaining the honor roll that year. It has proven to be stimulation to many children to work hard and produce grades that they might not have otherwise.
4. He is the originator of the “Children’s festival of Acadiana” which is a project designed to raise funds for the Ronald McDonalds House of Louisiana and other children organizations of Acadiana such as the Children’s museum.
5. His largest contribution to Iberia and Vermillion Parishes for over 7 years is the development of the KID-ID program. He developed software to digitally photograph, digitally fingerprint, and DNA test all of the 2 nd grade students. He provides this in conjunction with the local Sheriff departments. He provides the equipment and funds to operate the project and is focused to bringing it to the entire state of Louisiana. The information can be forwarded to a 5 state radius of sheriff departments in the event of abduction or missing child. His efforts won him the first annual “Hero of the year for youth award” presented by the Iberia parish school board for 2003.
6. He participates in many of the local school functions such as “Project Graduation”, “Cajun Fun Fest” and many other projects to enrich the youth of our area.
7. He has completed many orthodontic treatments on handicapped or deprived children, pro bono.
8. He has also developed programs to enhance the awareness of Dental health month, and Orthodontic health month. His contest for Dental health month stimulated almost 3000 students to participate.
9. He was recently nominated for the Angel of the Year for the State of Louisiana.
These are the primary efforts of Dr. Chastant, but by no means the limits of his contributions to our community.
