THE St. Lucia Arthritis and Lupus Association has received a generous donation of 500 pounds sterling from the Anse la Raye/UK Association.
The president, Mr. Leo Williams, was accompanied by four other members of the association to present the cheque at the SLALA office in Sans Souci.
In June 2014, the ALR/UK association held a “12 Bridges of London walk” in order to raise funds for Senior Citizens and disabled persons of their community as well as Lupus UK (which is the only national registered charity supporting people with systemic lupus and discoid lupus and which also assists those approaching diagnosis).
Williams said that while their fund raising was largely to help the needs of the community of Anse la Raye, this did not exclude support of other associations in St. Lucia and so it was only fitting that some of the funds raised be presented to the St. Lucia Arthritis and Lupus Association to help do the same work here, mirrored by the Lupus UK.
President of SLALA, Dr. Celia Mc. Connell-Downes expressed her heartfelt gratitude to the Anse la Raye/UK Association for remembering SLALA and informed the party that the funds were going to go right to use to fuel the on-going Viv Byen Programme in St. Lucia.
Viv Byen is a Chronic Disease Self- Management programme authored by the Stanford University. It is a 6 week long workshop for persons living with chronic disease as well as care-givers or family members. It teaches tools for self-management. There have been 16 workshops conducted island-wide since June 2014. The most recent being one in the community of Anse la Raye.
The goal to bring this programme to every community in St. Lucia is slowly being realized as a leaders training is planned for the west coast communities (from Anse-la Raye to Choiseul) in Soufriere from June 15-18.
The upcoming fund raiser by SLALA to assist in these efforts is a musical soiree by Dr. Ray Luck, Guyanese born international pianist on Saturday June 6. The public is invited to support SLALA in their fund raising efforts to make this programme a real success. Contact SLALA at 486-7000 or email [email protected].