Introducing Shreveport’s New High-Tech ‘Lighthouse’

Shreveport welcomes the first Community Lighthouse of Northern Louisiana.

Bringing Light to A Community

Headed by the Together Louisiana nonprofit, the Community Lighthouse project has proven itself a robust system to provide community support in the event of things like hurricanes and heavy storms.

A Community Lighthouse is a public place like a church equipped with solar panels and a battery backup system to provide electricity to locals when the power lines fail.

Shreveport's first Lighthouse will be the Mooretown Community Lighthouse at Morning Star Baptist Church.

"The Community Lighthouse is designed so that the residents in the area have a place to go in case of an outage." - Ella Harris,  Community Lighthouse volunteer at Morning Star Baptist Church

The Moortown Lighthouse will have a team of trained volunteers, known as Lighthouse keepers, ready to respond in a crisis. These volunteers will not only be there to help maintain the Lighthouse but also to reach out to locals in need during a crisis.

Current Lighthouses are Already Up and Running

Other than a place for people to charge their phones when the power goes out, each Lighthouse is equipped with cooling/heating stations, oxygen exchanges, light medical support, and the ability to help distribute food to those in immediate need.

So far there are 16 Lighthouses in Louisiana, with 15 of them in New Orleans and one in LaPlace. These first 16 Lighthouses were put to the test when Hurricane Francine touched ground in mid-September of this year, all of them passed the test with flying colors.