Today, I am pleased to highlight our Annual Charity Golf Event, a proud tradition of celebrating partnerships and giving back to our communities across the region. Now in its 9th year, the tournament took place in St. Kitts and Nevis last week. Together with our partners, we donated US$125,000 to the Advancement of Children’s Foundation to support several programs for at-risk youth and other vulnerable groups on the islands.
I know that many of you are unfamiliar with the tournament, so I would like to provide a little background information to help you better understand why it continues to be such a significant event for our company. Cable and Wireless and the former Columbus group have always been committed to giving back to the countries in which we operate. We engage in a variety of charitable and development activities each year as part of our Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) strategy, and often our employees are front and center in providing support. In many instances, we also leverage our strong partnerships to help strengthen our programs for social investments. These partners include technology vendors such as Ericsson, Huawei and Anixter, and numerous programming partners including HBO, NBCUniversal and Discovery.
Our charity golf tournament embodies these two practices, celebrating partnerships and working together to enable charitable organizations to enrich the lives of vulnerable groups in the countries in which the tournament is hosted. To date, we have held the event in Trinidad and Tobago, Curacao, Barbados, Jamaica, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic and now St. Kitts and Nevis. In each instance, we have worked with our local teams to select appropriate charities.
In nine years we have made a significant difference. We have supported children’s homes and places of safety, including the SOS Children’s Village in Jamaica, the Sunshine Achievement Center for underprivileged children in Barbados and the Rainbow Rescue team in Trinidad; we have enabled orphanages in Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico to better care for their wards, and we have raised awareness and have supported the important work of the Wilhelmina Fonds Breast Cancer Center in Curacao.
So while the tournament itself is an enjoyable event in which we interact with our key partners, it is more importantly, an opportunity for us to collectively contribute to organizations across the region that do so much for our local communities and young people.
This tournament is another reason to be a proud C&W employee… Together we are connecting communities, transforming lives.
Sincerely,
John Reid
President, Consumer Group
