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here’s plenty of bad news of late — the killing of innocent people in Nice, the murder of innocent police officers in Baton Rouge and Dallas, inappropriate postings on Facebook by a local sheriff’s office employee and plenty more.         

So it was great to see several prominent good news items in the paper in recent days reminding us that though there are plenty of problems in our community and elsewhere, there are still lots of people trying to do good.

The New Iberia Kiwanis Club’s trivia quiz at the Iberia Boys and Girls Club last week was great. Teams of Kiwanis volunteers put on the program in which more than 80 kids participated. The club bought pizzas for the participants and had $1,000 worth of gift cards for prizes, both no doubt big hits with the kids.

Probably the biggest prize was that the locals involved with the Kiwanis effort took time out of their day to spend with the kids at the Boys and Girls Club, to promote some fun good spirited competition and to perhaps teach these kids a bit as they heard the questions and answers.

Another good news item was reported on the front of Monday’s paper about the great response from the community a barbecue fundraiser got at St. Francis Diner. The diner was suffering significant funding challenges and reportedly was considering closing an extra day each week.

But word got around about the budget crunch, how the diner needed to find about $15,000 to maintain its current level of services and a concerned citizen got together with other concerned citizens and sent a “sizable donation” that made up a big chunk of the budget shortfall. Then the diner got a great response from locals who turned out to support its BBQ fundraiser and now talk of shutting the doors that extra day a week has been put off, at least for a while.

It’s good news that the diner is out of its financial hole for now and especially nice to see how this local help organization got some help when it needed it from so many in the community.

Then one more good news item was on the front of Tuesday’s paper in a report about an Eagle Scout project working to provide improvements in New Iberia City Park.

Dawson Sellers is working on the Eagle Scout project that involves making safer the walking bridges over Devil’s Pond in City Park. Sellers, his dad and uncle, volunteers from Iberia Building Systems and 10 younger Boy Scouts have all been involved with the effort, including extending railings on the bridges to make them safer, replacing benches and making other repairs and improvements.

Two area lumberyards helped by supplying some of the materials.

This is a project that will benefit the park and the hundreds of people that visit it in a typical week, done by a group of local citizens and supported by some area businesses — certainly good news by any measure.

Lots of people locally are stepping forward to do good things, in these three projects and plenty of others — worth noting when so much bad news keeps coming at us.

WILL CHAPMAN

PUBLISHER