BATON ROUGE - For high school seniors looking forward to the milestone of graduation, their plans for the last leg of the school year has been canceled due to the outbreak of COVID-19. For that reason, a local woman, Lucia Lawson, wanted them to feel celebrated even without walking across the graduation stage.

According to Lawson, the seniors of the 2020 class here in Baton Rouge have experienced quite a bit over the last four years.

“You got through 2016. I know a lot of people loss their houses and all the material things. By the grace of God, they still made it. They’re still here,” said Lawson.

In an effort to help, Lawson started a Facebook group to give them a sense of normalcy and to have a place for their accomplishments to be celebrated in these unprecedented times.

“There was a group for river parishes Adopt-A-Senior, and I started looking through it. I was like this is really cool, so I did a search to see if anything like that is happening for Baton Rouge. It wasn’t, so I was like ‘okay this needs to happen for our seniors’.” Lawson explained.

There are now more than 2500 people in this group with dozens of seniors being “adopted” by complete strangers, and they are not just getting graduation money in exchange.

“It’s been so rewarding just seeing people and how these connections have helped them. People are giving gifts. People are giving money for college. People are meeting up and actually forming relationships and mentor/mentee relationships,” continued Lawson.

With all the love, the students and their parents are feeling a great deal of gratitude.

“I want to say thank you for looking out for us seniors. Even though we might not get to walk across the stage, we have people like you looking out for us,” said Kevin Smith, a graduating senior at McKinley High School.

Although it has taken off and is helping many student, according to Lawson, it is really all about showing the soon-to-be graduates some special love.

“Take them in show them love. Of course they’re going to know their mom and aunts are proud of them, but what about the rest of the community,” asked Lawson.

For more information or to join “Adopt-A-Senior Baton Rouge”, you can visit their Facebook page or send an email to BRAdoptASenior@gmail.com