Sandals Foundation: Uplifting Women, Empowering Better Lives

The Sandals Foundation, in partnership with other organizations, provides support for females in need and gives real opportunities for them to advance. The Foundation believes that empowering women positively impacts lives.

Through the Women Helping Others Achieve (WHOA) program, skills training in agriculture, counseling and mentorship for abused girls, medical equipment for community health clinics, and educational opportunities for women across the Caribbean are offered.

Women Helping Others Achieve (WHOA) is a Caribbean-based initiative that provides support, mentorship, education, and tools to help marginalized women find inspiration and strength to transform their lives.

The Sandals Foundation supports these programs in the Caribbean, helping women, which translates into giving back to the whole community, building strength upon strength.

JAMAICA

Women’s Centre of Jamaica Foundation

Yearlong sewing skills program: Teenagers are provided with basic instructions in sewing skills, and constructing garments and accessories for their babies, while also empowering young mothers to generate income. The Sandals Foundation provides the requisite machinery and resources to ensure the program’s success.

Technological Support: Offering adolescent mothers a chance to continue their formal education or pursue skills training that can lead to gainful employment. The Sandals Foundation has been happy to contribute to this initiative through the donation of computers to assist in the Caribbean Secondary Education Certification program (CSEC) and Virtual Delivery Interface (VDI) benefiting teens from rural centers.

Women’s Health Network

In order to assist with early diagnosis and the immediate treatment of cervical cancer, three pieces of medical equipment and tools used during these procedures have been donated.

Through multiple rural clinics these machines helped to serve over 1,000 women across the island of Jamaica.

GRENADA

Sweetwater Foundation (RISE Program)

RISE is a counseling and socio-educational program for abused girls. Through Sweet Water Foundation, women are allowed a safe space, one-on-one help and group psychotherapy treatment.

One of the most important successes of the RISE program is that girls now understand their right to live a life free from violence and they now have clear, accessible routes to justice, if needed in the future.

Sex education, prevention and healing of sexual abuse make up half of the program. Workshops are hosted in the areas of nutrition, medical and sexual health, social justice, ecology/environment, art therapy, yoga therapy and the art of drumming.

GRENROP

In many rural communities, a significant number of women derive their livelihoods from subsistence farming, oftentimes with no financial compensation. Sandals Foundation is supporting the female farmers of the Grenada Network of Rural Women Producers (GRENROP) to produce cash crops grown on local farms to be supplied to hotels in Grenada and local groceries.

Through the program there has been the construction of two shade houses, provision of seedling trays, seeds, seedling mixture and fertilizers as well as ongoing training. The project startup was provided by partners Coca Cola.

BAHAMAS

PACE

Through PACE (Providing Access to Continued Education) teen mothers have an opportunity to complete high school as well as to learn a skill. They are mentored and guided in an effort to reduce incidences of repeat unwanted pregnancy. Through this kind of support and opportunities these young ladies are able to better provide for their own future and that of their families.

Sandals Foundation has provided funding for the completion of the PACE multi-purpose Centre. The building will be dedicated to the provision of counselling, medical treatment and delivery of high school curriculum to pregnant teenage girls who have been suspended from school due to pregnancy.

MEDIA CONTACT: 1-888-SANDALS, [email protected]