Million dollar walk warm-up

Vincentian walking legend Earl ‘Ole George’ Daniel and his walking partner are warming up for St. Lucia in the second leg of a Million Dollar Walk that’s being organised by the Rotary Club of St. Vincent South, in partnership with the Virginia-based International Hospital for Children (IHC).{{more}}

The first leg of the walk fired off in Grenada in mid-March. The initiative is geared to raise funds to procure equipment and to construct a Caribbean Hospital for Children, to be located in St. Vincent and the Grenadines (SVG).

In this current or first phase of the project, resources are being sought to finance the equipment now required for use by IHC visiting medical teams who have been travelling to St. Vincent periodically since 2002 treating scores of children. Several St. Lucian children have already benefited under the project. The establishment of a hospital in St. Vincent and the Grenadines will ensure that the much needed medical services will be available in the region.

The main fundraising activity is a series of sponsored walks by local legend Earl ‘Ole George’ Daniel and his walking partner Joel Butcher, to take place at various locations on mainland St. Vincent – Mustique, Canouan, Grenada, St. Lucia, Barbados, with the major walk in North America, from New York to Toronto. The North America walk will require the two to walk for approximately eight (8) days without sleep. Rotary Club and its partners are also facilitating the entering of this record on the Guinness Book of World Records. The two came close to creating this record in Jamaica some two years ago.

The St. Lucia walk takes off tomorrow Saturday, April 12th, at 5. 00 a.m. The walk from Dennery to Rodney Bay will pass through a number of villages before culminating at the Rodney Bay Marina. On this leg, organizers are inviting St. Lucians, in particular children, to join them along the route. It’s expected that corporate St. Lucia as well as other civic minded St. Lucians will lend their support, financial and otherwise, to this important initiative which has been dubbed-’Walking for life-Let the children live.’