Onlookers may have noticed recently a group of women offering free arts and crafts activities for children attending summer camp at two New Iberia parks.

The women spend two hours every Tuesday alternating between City Park and West End Park, providing Art in the Park for children. They will continue to do so until their eight-week program ends July 21.

But for these volunteers, who belong to the Junior Auxiliary of Iberia Parish, this activity is only one of several events they sponsor each year for local children in an attempt to implement the group’s message: “Care today, character tomorrow,” said group member Pam Broussard.

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The 28 members follow national guidelines in choosing five or six key projects each year that center around helping children, though the group often tackles extra, unrecorded projects throughout the year.

The group has been responsible for numerous, and often unnoticed, children’s activities over the past 11 years, said member Melissa Sharpe.

“We started as a group of 10 to 15 women who just wanted to do something for the parish,” Sharpe said. “Now that we’ve been doing it so long, we really see the difference we make when we do all our projects with the schools.”

The group’s biggest annual project is its Aim for Success abstinence program, when the group pays $4,100 to bring in a speaker from Dallas who speaks to local schools in teaching abstinence and awareness, Broussard said.

“It’s so effective,” Broussard said. “The kids get really quiet, and at every school there’s at least one student who stays after to speak one-on-one with the speaker.”

The Junior Auxiliary also puts on a Fun Day Halloween party in Jeanerette and an annual Spring Blast at West End Park, where they use “goody bags” and fun activities to teach children about health, fitness and hygiene.

Another form of hidden help offered by the group involves the adoption of a family every five years, in which the group typically takes care of a single mother and her children while offering the mother classes on how to get herself and her family back on their feet. The family is chosen through the Social Service Center and remains anonymous, Broussard said.

“Even auxiliary members don’t know who it is we’re helping,” Sharpe said.

This time of year, the group is busy preparing for its key fundraiser, Bid for Kids, a live and silent auction held at Clementine’s every year in September. This year’s fundraiser will be held at 6:30 p.m. Sept. 23 and will feature five chefs from Clementine’s, Little River Inn, Bon Creole, Cypress Bayou Casino and I Monelli of Lafayette, respectively.

Last year’s fundraiser raised $11,000, and having not been turned down yet by any business when asked to donate an item for the auction, the group hopes this year will be the biggest one yet. Each donated item will be auctioned to the highest bidder, and all proceeds will go to the various projects that the Junior Auxiliary puts on each year.