Great Bay – When seasoned travel writer Melody Wren of the Toronto Star and Grand magazine went to inform her friend a teacher at the 'Sir Isaac Brock' kindergarten class in Guelph, Ontario, Canada of her impending press trip to St. Maarten little did she know that the children in that class would be so moved by her reference to I CAN FOUNDATION and the work its founder, Cassandra Gibbs had begun that they would collect toys for her to take to them.Wren packed a separate suitcase full of these gifts and agreed to play Santa Claus only that her sleigh was a WestJet flight that brought her to St. Maarten for the first time on a trip hosted by the St. Maarten Tourist Bureau which also included several other colleagues from the US.
On the Sunday afternoon when she had a free time, Wren jumped in a taxi from the Westin hotel and asked to be taken to the Foundation – home for orphaned children.
"How wonderful it was to be among the children and to see their faces as they opened the gifts," she said.
"Miss Cassandra Gibbs – Debbie, I think she's also called – is doing such a great job that it has inspired me along with some other colleagues to do something more substantive," she continued.
"Felicia and I are going ahead with a foundation for Caribbean children, and will be setting up a website as soon as possible," Wren further disclosed, referring to Felicia Persaud of Caribbean World News, who was also on the press trip. "Alexis (Lipsitz) that writes the Frommers guidebooks is going to include it in the next guidebook so loads of tourists will be directed to it."
Ms. Lipsitz was also part of the US-Canadian press group that recently spent some four days getting to know the destination.
According to Wren, the Ontarian kindergarten students would be thrilled to know that gifts were not only delivered but also that they have inspired a whole new charity effort by journalists who are normally on the hunt for similar stories than being the protagonists of such stories themselves.
