Most people would shudder at the thought of walking alongside a busy road to run errands, however when you don’t have a choice, you grit your teeth and bear it.

“I have to travel this road to get where I’m going,” said Dale Bell, who lives on Gardere Lane. “Oh, it’s scary, especially when it gets dark.”

East Baton Rouge Parish Sheriff Sid Gautreaux says back then, Gardere was exploding with crime.

"We had more calls for service come out of this area than any other area that we serviced and a lot of it was violent crimes," said Gautreaux. "We had shootings, we had homicides that were occurring, and we had a lot of robberies."

Buried deep within Baton Rouge is the Gardere neighborhood, a low-income, heavily minority community that often goes overlooked by the city at large. Enter the Gardere Initiative, aimed at keeping the kids of Gardere off the streets, away from drugs and crime and engaged with their neighbors.

A community improvement project is taking another step to make a portion of Baton Rouge a better place, but they need your help.

Songs and prayers filled the night Dec. 22 during Christmas in Gardere. The Gardere Initiative sponsored the event in the Gardere neighborhood.

High school volunteers gathered at 9 a.m. to fill bags with resource information and gift-wrapped books for children. They also prepared about 200 luminaries to be placed around the neighborhood.

Trying to walk along Gardere Lane is as dangerous as it is unsightly.

Pedestrians are forced to walk in the street or along ditches where trash bobs in the murky water. Crossing the street is nearly impossible at high-traffic times with no crosswalks, while parents pushing strollers in the road are left at the mercy of drivers who often cannot see them at night.

Students, teachers and volunteers with the Gardere Initiative gathered Monday for a daylong celebration of the life and work of Martin Luther King Jr.

“That’s all I used to hear in high school was that it was really horrible,” McCaleb said on a recent afternoon as she typed up notes at the Gardere Initiative’s Ned Avenue headquarters. “What I was thinking, what I’d see doesn’t really match. My perception of the neighborhood doesn’t really match what it is.”

The diverse group, composed of law enforcement, educators, church groups and medical service groups, gathers each month to plan events that will hopefully get tools of empowerment to Gardere’s children and adults, the Baton Rouge attorney said.

There was a free art camp for two hours in the early afternoon  (1 P.M. – 3 P.M.) at 8435 Ned Avenue in Baton Rouge, on April 12, 2014.

The LSU Museum of Art is involved with reaching out to the local community with an effort called the Neighborhood Arts Project.

This event was dubbed the Gardere Initiative and had the added participation of the Red Stick Mobile Farmers Market.

The idea is to provide free art making supplies and activities for children of all ages to explore the possibilities of art.