13 June 2018
Blind Welfare Association received donation from the Soufriere Pitons Lions Club
By Ministry of Health
(PRESS RELEASE) – The St. Lucia Blind Welfare Association (SLBWA) has received a much needed donation from the Soufriere Pitons Lions Club to support the Kids Insight project, one of the core programmes of the SLBWA.
Kids Insight is a joint project of the St. Lucia Blind Welfare Association (SLBWA), the Lions Clubs of St. Lucia and the West Virginia Eye Institute. The Lions Clubs committed to being the fund raisers to sponsor the volunteers from West Virginia to serve the children of St. Lucia. Denise Godin is the Eye Health Officer with the SLBWA.
“The Kids Insight project first started in 2003 and at that time our intention was to address cataract surgery for seven of our children and we invited a wonderful team of specialist from West Virginia Eye Institute for a one time visit. And, when they came they examined 80 children and said ‘We can’t leave all these children behind, we’re going to come again.’ And they’ve come every single year since 2003 and we’ve never even been able to complete and cover the need of our children with blinding eye conditions.”
The last visit by the team of volunteers was in February 2018, where they saw over 118 children plus adults with blinding eye conditions requiring specialist services.
“We have an excellent team of volunteers here on the island who every year support them, make sure that it happens. And, it is one project I think for all of St. Lucia where the benefits not only affect the individual, it affects their future and it can affect the future of St. Lucia.”
For the past 9 years the Soufriere Pitons Lions Club has held and annual Tea Party with all of the proceeds going towards supporting the Kids Insight project. Faydian Gill, President of the Soufriere Pitons Lions Club said the club is a service organization working towards the improvement of people, the community and the country by undertaking various project such as Kids Insight.
“Today we are here to present a cheque to Kids Insight. We had a fundraiser sometime ago and as a result of that Kids Insight fundraiser we were able to donate $6,000 to a very worthy cause which is Kids Insight.”
He made an appeal to other service clubs to support the tremendous work of the St. Lucia Blind Welfare Association.
“Well every St. Lucian should know that the Blind Welfare Association needs all the help it can get. So every service club in St. Lucia I would encourage them to do whatever it is they can to raise some funds to assist the Blind Welfare Association.”
The cheque presentation took place at the office of the St. Lucia Blind Welfare Association in Castries.
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