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FIRSTCARIBBEAN GIVES TO HURRICANE RAVAGED ISLANDS |
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Wednesday, 05 November 2008 |
 COMTRUST DIRECTOR DAWNE WILLIAMS HANDS OVER CHEQUE FOR BDS$50,000 TO DIRECTOR GENERAL OF THE BARBADOS RED CROSS SOCIETY EDMOND BRADSHAW.
Jamaica will be allocating the funds to assist with repairs to schools, senior citizens’ and children’s homes and affected farming communities. Funds for Turks and Caicos Islands will be administered by the National Disaster Relief Fund and the Red Cross, while the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) will oversee funds to assist with the rebuilding of Morton Salt located on Great Inagua.
The Bank through its charity, the FirstCaribbean International Comtrust Foundation Limited recently teamed up with the Barbados Red Cross Society to assist with the Haiti Hurricane Appeal. The Bank donated US$25,000 to Haiti to assist with general recovery efforts.
During a special presentation to the Red Cross, Comtrust Director Dawne Williams described the situation in Haiti as heartbreaking, “This donation is therefore from the hearts of all of us at FirstCaribbean”. Dawne also observed that in its six years of operation, FirstCaribbean has made disaster relief one of the main priorities of its social responsibility agenda. “The Comtrust budgets annually for hurricane relief, and even though Haiti lies outside of the geographic area covered by FirstCaribbean, we decided that we could not ignore the situation there. They are our Caribbean brothers and sisters and we see this as no better way of fulfilling our responsibility to our Caribbean communities”.
Director General of the local chapter of the Red Cross, Edmond Bradshaw, noted that the first shipment of basic materials such as tarpaulins had already arrived in Haiti. He explained that cash donations were preferred in light of the difficulty of shipping items from port to port which, in some cases, did not reach the destination intended.
The Barbados Red Cross Society was founded in 1960 as part of the British Red Cross in 1966. The Red Cross is one of the leading agencies engaged in disaster response with over 500 volunteers locally.
The FirstCaribbean Comtrust Foundation administers the bank’s Corporate Social Responsibility programmes, and is administered by a seven member Board of Trustees which is currently chaired by the bank’s Managing Director for The Bahamas, Sharon Brown.
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