In 1912 the first Co-Operative Club International was formed. The new name SERTOMA was first used in 1950 and has been the name ever since. On December 12, 1959, twenty Lafayette men banded together to form the Lafayette SERTOMA Club. Since then SERTOMA Clubs of Lafayette and surrounding areas have lived up to the name SERTOMA in many projects. Here we highlight a few of SERTOMA's projects:

• 1934: SERTOMA started the Sugar Bowl Classic in New Orleans which is still taking place each year.
• 1963: The Freedom's Program started becoming the American Heritage Program.
  • The American Heritage Program:
  • In 1963 Sertoma started Freedom's Program to distribute a copy of the Declaration of Independence to every seventh grader, and later the Bill of Rights was also added in. The point was to enable American school children to know who signed the Declaration and what it cost them. For most signers it cost their fortune, their home, and, in many cases, their lives. The Freedom's Program was later expanded to the Heritage Program with a somewhat broader scope, not only to let school children know about two of the foundational documents of American freedom but to educate them about our economic system as well. More particularly the Heritage Program tells the story of the socialist experiment of the early colonists at Plymouth. The common storehouse idea and communal ownership did not work. Equal distribution to all alike regardless of how hard or little they worked was not a feasible system. The good Christian people at Plymouth were reduced to near starvation and quarreling with each other. The colonists had a meeting to try to figure out a way to motivate everyone to do his or her fair share of the work. The new plan? Private ownership and personal responsibility. Sound familiar? Do the words "capitalism" and "private enterprise" ring any bells?
  • Governor Bradford wrote in his diary that because of private ownership everyone got busy so they could have more food and live better. The result was to give responsibility back to the people and take it away from the government. The results were private initiative, increased production, competition, dignity, and just rewards for work done. Capitalism and the engine for free enterprise were born in America.
  • Spreading socialism threatens to return us all to a failed experiment. It didn't work at Plymouth in the 1700s, it didn't work in the once great Soviet Union, and it won't work in America in the 21 century. Sertoma aims to get the message out through the Heritage Program.
• 1963: Lafayette SERTOMA Club immunized 80,000 citizens for polio.
  • In 1963 the Sertoma Club of Lafayette took on the monumental task of immunizing everyone in Lafayette Parish and the surrounding area for all three known strains of polio. At least 22 articles appeared in local papers during the ramp up and the carrying out of the immunization program. Everyone in Lafayette got on board.
  • The guy in the middle is our own former Sertoma President Gerald Domingue.
    
  • In 1963, 80,000 people were immunized and Sertoma made a difference.
  • Since the immunization of the 1960s, initiated by Sertoma, there has not been a single case, much less an outbreak, of polio.

                                                         

• 1963: SERTOMA International and our local clubs took on the mission of serving the needs of children and others with speech-language and other communication disorders.
  • SERTOMA's Boys Clubs and later Boys & Girls Clubs were established and are still working in Acadiana.
• 1960s: SERTOMA raised funds by sponsoring the Lafayette "Slow Pitch" softball tournament.
  • SERTOMA provided funds to purchase the computer hardware and software for use by the hearing impaired students at Lafayette High School.
• 1986: Lafayette SERTOMA Club produced the first SERTOMA Cajun Air Festival as a fundraiser to provide the necessary funds to continue doing projects in the community.
• 1993: SERTOMA Literacy Camps help hundreds of children become readers and continue to do so.
• 1999: SERTOMA begins to provide scholarships for children to go to Camp Bon Coeur, a summer camp for kids with heart defects.
• 2001: The Alan Comeaux Endowed Scholarship in Communication Disorders was established at University of Louisiana at Lafayette providing support to doctoral students who plan on careers of service in communication disorders.
• 2002: Testing equipment for the Audiology Booth at S.J. Montgomery was purchased by SERTOMA and is the best in the region.
• 2007: The Autism Society of Acadiana (ASAC) became the first official affiliate of the Lafayette SERTOMA Club. The local Club teamed up with UL Lafayette and ASAC to hold the first SERTOMA International Conference on Autism Spectrum Disorders (http://www.ucs.louisiana.edu/~jxo1721/Autism07.html). Speakers included world-renowned professionals in medicine and related fields. The Conference focused on the causes and treatments of autism. For more information on Autism, please visit the ASAC website; donated $16,000 in collaboration with the Breakfast SERTOMA Club to Lafayette Health Clinic.
• 2008:SERTOMA held another Cajun Air Festival featuring the Thunderbirds and became the title sponsor of the Walk for Hope co-sponsored by the Autism Society of Acadiana, an official SERTOMA affiliate.
• 2009: Sertoma sponsorships included Acadiana Outreach, Louisiana Military Museum, Freedom's Week, the Deaf Action Center, and American soldiers injured by IEDs.
• 2010: SERTOMA Club of Lafayette co-sponsored a SERTEEN scholar at a local high school, a cochlear implant for a child with Usher's Syndrome (commonly causing blindness and deafness), a medical mission in Central America, and was acknowledged by our international organization, Sertoma, Inc., in the Sertoman Magazine (see the article on pp. 18-21 at http://www.sertoma.org/Document.Doc?id=432), and in two published books as a key partner in scholarly work completed reclassifying communication disorders and seeking out the causes of the autism epidemic (now affecting 1/100 children being born in the USA according to the Centers for Disease Control).    

Throughout the last 50 years, theSERTOMA Club of Lafayette has served the local community, the region, the nation, and the world. It continues to do so. Projects have included funding of cochlear implants, an audiology booth at S. J. Montgomery School, donations for Hospice of Acadiana, Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, St. Joseph's Diner, Habitat for Humanity, the Grief Center, Christmas in April, the Autism Society of Acadiana, biomedical research on the causes and treatments of autism, and to the Lafayette Community Health Clinic.