NEW ORLEANS – Officials announced a new partnership between Good Shepherd School (GSS) and the Giving Hope Foundation (GHF) and a planned second location of the Good Shepherd School in the Desire-Florida Community. The brand-new Good Shepherd School to be called Giving Hope Campus will be located at 3601 Desire Parkway across the street from the existing Giving Hope Community Center and next to a green infrastructure academy run by Thrive New Orleans.
Through the Giving Hope Community Center, GHF and Thrive have partnered to provide a safe place for families, youth, and seniors to develop a greater community and pursue their hopes and dreams with summer camps, after-school programming, wellness and education opportunities, and job training. The Thrive academy will provide training for community members for jobs in the green industry and will serve as an educational resource for the GSS Giving Hope Campus.
The new GSS Giving Hope Campus will temporarily be housed in more than 24,000 square feet of modular classrooms acquired by Troy and Tracy Duhon, founders of the Giving Hope Foundation. The modular classrooms will be delivered to the new campus site this fall. The GSS Giving Hope campus will open in time for the 2022-2023 school year and will welcome only kindergarteners for its first year. OneApp applications for parents with kindergarten students for the 2022-2023 school year will open on Monday, November 1, 2021. Officials say they expect to expand one grade per year before the planned permanent school building opens in the 2024-2025 school year.
“Tracy and I are so excited to be part of this incredible transformation of the Giving Hope Community Center by partnering with the Good Shepherd School to provide top-notch education,” said Giving Hope Foundation founder Troy Duhon. “God is going to do incredible things with the Good Shepherd School at the Giving Hope Community Center.”
The newly announced campus will expand the legacy of Father Harry Tompson on the 20th anniversary year of his passing. Since opening its doors in 2001, the Gentilly-based Good Shepherd Pre-K and Elementary School has carried out Fr. Tompson’s lifelong mission of helping and educating children in need. The Catholic school opened its doors just four months after Fr. Tompson’s death in 2001 with the mission of educating children no matter their family’s financial situation. So far, GSS has graduated 189 students and currently serves 275 students.
“We’re extremely thankful to form this new partnership with the Giving Hope Foundation to expand the Good Shepherd School’s footprint in the New Orleans community,” said GSS President and CEO Thomas Moran, Jr. “Since opening our doors in 2001, we have educated hundreds of students and strive every day to carry out Father Tompson’s mission of bridging the huge financial and cultural chasm between the city’s wealthiest and poorest citizens.”
Currently, 122 GSS graduates are thriving academically in local area Catholic, private, public, and charter high schools. GSS graduates have attended 16 local Catholic schools with the most significant numbers at St. Augustine, Jesuit, Brother Martin, Archbishop Rummel, St. Katharine Drexel, Cabrini, St. Mary’s Academy, Mount Carmel Academy, and De La Salle.
Good Shepherd is also proudly celebrating its first college graduates which now number 13 who have earned a broad range of degrees. Four additional GSS graduates are scheduled to complete their college degrees this December with more than 30 others on the horizon.
For more information on GSS, visit www.thegoodshepherdschool.org.
