PHILIPSBURG:--- Year eight indeed shaped up to be a great one for the region’s largest cancer fundraiser across the English and Dutch Caribbean – CIBC FirstCaribbean’s Walk for the Cure.
Partnership with the Positive Foundation and Adtalem Global Education on St. Maarten heightened the awareness, raising a grand total of USD $16,000 for the benefit of the Positive Foundation.
The donation supports the foundation’s endeavors which are geared towards stimulating, educating and activating the consciousness of the community on aspects of self-responsibility towards overall health improvement, and in particular, towards breast cancer. Since its inauguration in 1998, the Foundation has organized month-long breast cancer campaigns every October.
The campaigns include public service announcements, free clinical breast examination screens, demonstration sessions on breast self-examination and the distribution of educational literature. Activities also include their popular Pink, Phit, Phabulous walk/run which, last October was joined with the bank’s Walk for the Cure, making for St. Maarten’s largest walk.
The Positive Foundation broadened its scope as of recent, by also joining in the awareness of prostate cancer. Last September, Michael Ferrier, prostate cancer survivor, was the first to share his story as part of the Hour of Hope series (stories by cancer survivors, patients and caregivers) launched by CIBC FirstCaribbean in collaboration with the Positive and the Elektralytes Foundations.
The interactive and intimate sessions were held throughout September, (prostate cancer awareness month), and into October (breast cancer awareness month), as part of the bank’s 2019 Walk for the Cure activities and commitment to the cause.
Such events are made possible through the innovative and unswerving efforts of the bank’s Walk Managers and in-house planning committees. This, together with the efforts of regional partners such as Adtalem Global Education, that joined as a regional sponsor last year, has propelled the fundraising from a modest USD$30 000 at the inception of the walk eight years to over USD$2.2 million over the past eight years.
Adtalem Global Education operates three higher education institutions in the region. The group took part in the walks in St. Maarten, Barbados and St. Kitts, where its campuses are located.
CIBC FirstCaribbean was enthusiastic in welcoming them as one of its regional sponsors, given their established track record of engaging with communities where their campuses are located and impacting them for the better. Adtalem is a mission-driven, leading workforce solutions provider and the parent company of Ross University School of Medicine in Barbados, American University of the Caribbean School of Medicine in St. Maarten and Ross University School of Veterinary Medicine in St Kitts.
Plans for Walk for the Cure 2020 have already started and with the impact of Covid-19 across the region, the walk may take a different format this year.
