Covid in St. Lucia

As with the rest of the world, St. Lucia is still being affected by the Covid 19 pandemic. We are in a State of Emergency with a curfew in the evenings and all the usual protocols. The government tried to reopen schools for in person tuition, both last year and this academic year, but in all cases, they had to close after a short time. Schools finally reopened in April of this year and to date they have been able to remain open for students to attend in person. The effect

Naturally, these restrictions affected the functioning of Amy’s Gift and our ability to deliver music tuition to the children at Dunnottar School. On the other hand, the wards at the Boys’ Training Centre were in lockdown and the manager of the Centre requested we increase our tuition hours because these sessions were providing a useful activity for the boys. As mentioned on our last newsletter with the permission of our principal sponsor, the Amy Winehouse Foundation, we were able to divert some of the unused tuition funds from Dunnottar School and use them to provide extra hours for the Boys’ Training Centre.

The Boys Training Centre

Our ever resourceful music teacher, John Polius, was able to provide some music events for the BTC band.

Drumming session to celebrate Creole Day

The Christmas Party at Boys Training Centre (BTC)

The BTC band was invited to play at a retirement function at the Gros Islet Polyclinic

Dunnottar School

Continuing tuition of the children at Dunnottar School during the closure of schools provided a challenge for John. He managed to provide online tuition for individual students which provided them with an opportunity to continue their music tuition even though they could not attend in person.

Amy’s Gift Committee

Our non-profit application to Government has been approved and we are now a fully recognized charity in St. Lucia. We hope this might enable us to access funding from various non-governmental agencies once resources are flowing again.

Thank you to:

The Amy Winehouse Foundation

At the start of this financial year in September 2020 we decided that we would try to budget to formally increase the tuition hours at BTC from 8 to 12 hours per week. We appealed to the Foundation and they immediately agreed to provide the extra funding. We are deeply appreciative of The Amy Winehouse Foundation which has provided us with unwavering support. July 23rd 2021 is the tenth anniversary of the death of Amy Winehouse. We wish to recognize Amy’s legacy in music and the achievements of her Foundation.

Our supporters

One important function of this charity is fund raising and that was seriously impacted by the Covid restrictions. We have managed some limited fund raising here with yoga lessons provided by Sue Sandle and Geraldine Waring and in the UK with Tai Chi lessons provided by Sue. In spite of these efforts, we realized that we had to try and implement another form of fund raising. We set up a GoFundMe website with the invaluable assistance of Kristin Hunter, who set up the webpage and continues to regularly remit donations from USA. Sue Sandle set up a similar GoFundMe webpage for the UK.

Thank you to everyone who donated to our charity through these platforms. We were overwhelmed by your prompt and generous donations, which have enabled us to be able to feel confident that we have adequate funding, combined with our normal sponsorship, to continue to operate Amy’s Gift in 2022.

We could not continue without your support.