Volunteers lend a helping hand after Omar
Pleas made for government assistance

By VonDez Phipps
Reporter-SKNVibes.com

BASSETERRE, St. Kitts – Volunteers from the Community Achievers Project (CAP) in collaboration with students from the International University of Nursing (IUN) have come together to clean the coastal areas of Old Road Village after the destruction left behind by Hurricane Omar.

The community effort has been ongoing for almost a week and seeks to offer help to persons who were affected by the passage of the storm.

President of the Student Government Association at the IUN April Esparza told SKNVibes that the students sacrificed their time to help in the clean-up effort despite not being familiar with the hurricane victims.

“We are reaching out to these people for a good cause. It may not be in nursing, but it’s helping people in another way. We started a massive drive at our school and collected food supplies which we handed over to NEMA and asked them to distribute them accordingly to the people devastated by Omar.”

She added that the volunteerism gave a sense of “one community, one love”, and acknowledged a few outstanding volunteers including Jesse Ripp, Helen Le and Terry Kane.

President of CAP, Victoria Baucom said the volunteer service is a living testimony to show that people still care. “We have volunteers here getting their hands dirty and working in the sun for people they never met. This is volunteerism at its best.

When we came here, there was no surface to be seen; it was entirely littered. But, piece by piece, volunteers cleaned the place and although we have a lot more to do. Together we have made a lot of progress.

“Anything close to the roadside, people would be willing to help, but anything off the road is another story. You couldn’t walk around here, but people live here and everyone should be treated with some dignity because this could happen to anyone, regardless of where they live.”

President Baucom thanked Dr. Catherine Garnar, Dean of the IUN for allowing the volunteers to work closely with CAP as they have shown great passion in their commitment to humanitarian work.

Baucom informed that NEMA representatives came to the site to assess the damage but neither offered assistance nor worked in conjunction with the volunteers. She added that “these are mostly poor people who have lost all they had, this is a perfect opportunity for the government to offer help and bring back hope to the people of the area”.