Sister Rosario

Sister Rosario serves as director of the Louis Infants' Crisis Center in Houma, LA. Founded by Rosario in 1979, the facility is a licensed child care center for children whose ages range from newborn to 8 years. These youth are victims of neglect, abuse and abandonment.

The Louis Infants' Crisis Center is a center that aims to prevent child neglect and abuse by offering protective services to children through a 24-hour, 7-day a week emergency shelter. It also provides counseling to parents. It is a licensed child care center working with the Louisiana State Protective Services and Child Placement Agency and/or the parents themselves toward meeting the needs of children and their families in a crisis situation or those in imminent danger of abuse, neglect or exploitation.

Sister Rosario describes the center as a step before foster care. By offering emergency shelter to children and intensive counseling services to parents, the center hopes to prevent a potentially dangerous situation from worsening and causing the involuntary removal of the child from the home. Long-range solutions also focus on public education and structured programs to teach basic parenting skills.

When the Center first opened, it was contained on the first floor of a two-story convent. Through Sister Rosario's efforts, the Center has since expanded to include three buildings that house an immediate care facility and a long-term care facility for a total of 20 children.

Sister Rosario has been quoted as saying: "We strive to make the Louis Infant Center a beacon of hope and happiness and peace, and especially serenity for and in the lives of young children, and that every child who enters through the doors of the Louis Infant Center will leave with nothing but happy memories, safe memories and will have been enabled to cope with their situations."