As part of its philanthropic efforts, Sandals Foundation donated 350 vouchers to families across the island over the holidays, spreading good cheer overall and touching the lives of those in need.
According to Winston Anderson, Managing Director at Sandals Resorts International, this initiative is merely a start for Sandals – one it intends to continue in 2024.
“As a company we believe in one very important thing: it’s that we have a responsibility to ensure that we take care of folks in the community; tourism is not all about people staying in a hotel, so many of our team members live, work (and) have families in all of these communities. We intend to continue to work with communities across Saint Lucia,” Anderson said a ceremony last week.
“Let me say that it’s never enough. Yes, we’re going to touch 350 homes, but the truth is we understand fully that there are 500, maybe 1000 homes that need to be touched but the journey will continue. From 2024 we intend to work with the younger ones,” Anderson added, noting that Sandals is looking at more after school programmes, but “will never stop working with the communities certainly in the entire Castries basin, Gros islet and the other side of the island.”
The Christmas vouchers were valued at EC$120.00 each.
For more than four decades, Sandals Resorts International has been involved in giving back to communities in the islands it calls home, Adam Stewart, President of Sandals’ Foundation noted in an online post.
The establishment of the Foundation became a structured approach to making positive change within the areas of education, community and environment, Stewart said.
For Sandals, he added, “inspiring hope is more than a philosophy: it is a call to action. It is about equipping our people with confidence, empowerment and fulfillment, while providing communities with real, sustainable solutions to the problems they encounter each day. We, in turn, are inspired daily by their resilience, their creativity and their tenacity to achieve a better life. Our immeasurable rewards have been the progress and success of our programs and the beneficiaries.”