A new nonprofit aims to serve vulnerable children while giving a new life to forgotten buildings

Restoring history and rebuilding futures.

Christian and Karen Vigé are spending their present making that motto possible.

In 2025, the husband-and-wife duo founded Magnolia Children’s Group, an organization that seeks to create safe, trauma-informed environments for foster children by revitalizing deteriorating state properties.

“When you think about Louisiana, our beautiful state, and you think about old, dilapidating buildings, the possibilities are endless,” Christian says. “There’s firehouses, old schools, plantations, old government housing, army barracks—and most of them are sitting across the state in areas where we need resources.”

Louisiana has approximately 7,000 children in foster care, with 48 homes for every 100 in the system, as reported in a recent Louisiana Illuminator article.

While many are unaware of the challenges Louisiana’s foster system faces, Christian learned more about the state’s foster care crisis after serving on several boards, including Capital Area CASA and the Louisiana Department of Health’s Child Death Review Panel. He currently serves as co-chair of the Children’s Cabinet Advisory Board, a state government group that advocates for Louisiana children’s policies and programs.

Helping children was a cause that always weighed heavily on Christian and Karen’s hearts. The two lead their lives with a strong Christian faith and an attitude best summed up by the phrase, “If not us, then who?”

When they became parents to their own son and daughter, their perspectives were widened even further. “As a mom, it breaks my heart to think of a child whose birthday is forgotten,” Karen says. “It makes me want to take all the children, and I can’t do that. No one can do that.”

Instead, Christian and Karen kept thinking and praying about what they could do.

The idea came to them in an unlikely place: a couple’s weekend getaway. Christian and Karen were staying at a bed and breakfast in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, and while eating brunch with the owners, they learned that the building was an old Victorian mansion previously owned by the state. The B&B entrepreneurs purchased, renovated and repurposed it, breathing new life into a previously abandoned asset.

“We were sitting on the screened-in porch reading and just having some downtime, and it really just hit us,” Christian recalls. “Why can we not do the same thing, but for Louisiana’s most vulnerable children and families?”

Ever since, Christian and Karen have been hard at work, leveraging their connections in child welfare and bringing Magnolia Children’s Group to life.

The Magnolia model is built to serve as a landing pad for foster children. It’s designed to be an alternative to traditional emergency placement and reduce the number of moves a child experiences.

When children land at Magnolia, they can stay until the best possible placement becomes available, giving DCFS time to find longer-term foster families, adoptive opportunities or kinship care. In addition, as soon as children arrive at Magnolia, they can immediately receive 24/7 trauma-informed care.

Magnolia is building a staff with Trust-Based Relational Intervention training, a holistic caregiving approach for children experiencing trauma, loss or adversity that can make transitions less stressful.

“One of the things that we wanted to make sure about Magnolia was that everything we do would be through the lens of a child,” Christian says.

Even simple changes in language, like referring to therapy appointments as “sunlight sessions,” make the Magnolia culture stand out.

“Magnolia, the word, directly means purity, dignity and nobility,” Karen says. “That is what we believe children should receive.”

To ensure children receive the best care and resources, Magnolia strives to be a bridge by building partnerships with pre-existing community organizations including Front Yard Bikes, Grandparents Raising Grandchildren, Youth Oasis and more. The Magnolia leaders also invite former foster children to speak on their lived experiences, and they’ve built a diverse board with member backgrounds ranging from construction and historic preservation to pediatrics and child development.

“Children are often the voiceless, but we need to help continue to raise awareness,” Christian says. “It takes a village to raise a child, and it’s an arduous work.”

The first Magnolia location is set to open within the former Louisiana School for the Visually Impaired at 1120 Government St., which also happens to be the current home of the Family Youth Service Center.

Fundraising is actively underway, with Magnolia Children’s Group hosting its first gala on Sept. 24 at Church of the King. Christian says the funds raised will directly support the organization’s mission and the hiring of the rest of the Magnolia team for their first Baton Rouge site. Long term, the goal is to replicate the Magnolia model across the state so that every child has a safe and secure place to stay, no matter the day, time or situation.

“We’re a mom and a dad trying to show children that they have someone that’s going to support them,” Karen says. “Every child in Louisiana should know there’s someone who’s backing them.”

This article was originally published in the September 2026 issue of 225 Magazine.