‘Ole George’, Butcher set for big walk tomorrow

After many months of extensive planning and training, the partnership between the Rotary Club of St. Vincent South and Vincentian walking legends Earl “Ole George” Daniel and Joel Butcher will be put on showcase before the world.{{more}} Having completed successful walks in Grenada, St. Lucia, Barbados, Bequia, Canouan and St. Vincent, the team will now focus on the BIG WALK, which will see both walkers attempting to walk for eight days without sleep from Niagara Falls in Canada to Lincoln Terrace in New York. The journey will begin early afternoon on Saturday, 16th August, and will conclude just after sundown on Sunday, 24th August, 2008.

In 2002, the Rotary Club of St. Vincent South entered into a partnership with the International Hospital for Children (IHC), Virginia, USA. Visits by several medical teams to SVG each year have facilitated clinics at the Milton Cato Memorial Hospital, through the Ministry of Health, for scores of Vincentians and other Caribbean children, and medical interventions to over 200 of these children. The value of this programme to date is in excess of EC$13 Million dollars.

The IHC’s Annual Yearbook of Vincentian children whose lives were touched and changed forever for the year 2007/08 alone reveals that 408 children benefited from life saving or life-enhancing pediatric critical care. This represents a 150% increase over the children served the previous year. Children from Guyana, Anguilla, Grenada and St. Lucia have also benefited from surgery under this programme.

Several individuals, business houses, corporations and organizations have embraced the walk and programme locally, regionally and internationally. The team is, however, making a final appeal to Vincentians at home not to be outdone by the Diaspora. You can, therefore, contact any member of the Rotary Club South or lodge your contributions at the NIS office in Kingstown, where deposits to the Club’s account will be facilitated.

The North American walk will be assisted on the ground through the Consulates of New York and Toronto, with support from committees established to coordinate medicals, emergencies, transportation, activities, fundraising, routing, public relations and marketing. Several Vincentians and Caribbean Organisations have committed to donate to the project/programme through various fundraising initiatives.

SVG and the Caribbean are about to be showcased. Let us rally around this project for the children. they need us now.