The Campden Park Industrial Estate headquartered St. Vincent Brewery Limited on Monday 22nd March , 2021 donated 2000 pieces of personal protective equipment to the local Health Ministry.
The items included “One Thousand (1000) Rapid Response Antigen kits (Abbott Brand), Five Hundred (500) N95 masks and Five Hundred (500) Disposable gowns (Blue Colour),” a release from the longstanding corporate citizen described. The donated PPE’s are expected to “be put to use immediately following handover by the CMO [Chief Medical Officer] of St. Vincent & the Grenadines.”
While speaking at the hand-over ceremony, SVBL’s newly minted Country Manager Shafia London pointed out, “when we can align our humanity with corporation in effort to bridge the gap between our world and yours – we are following a true path of social commitment and acknowledgement that if there is no you, there is no us.
“St. Vincent Brewery Limited is traditionally involved in the sponsoring of sports, arts, culture and education. Being very practical and clear – we use our profit margins to give back to communities and support peripheral economies that work hand in hand with our corporate objectives and targets. Let’s look at where we are now?
“We are at a point where these same sectors are collapsing, collapsed or affected by this dark plague of a pandemic called COVID-19; our focuses cannot primarily reside in these areas alone. As big structured as the brewery may be, it is also as small as the shops dotted across our islands that distribute and sell our products. We share the perspective of the common man and woman.
“This has been the catalyst for the decision to expand into the support the medical fields through donation. I must stress on the term donation because the nature of our intent is to provide and not receive. It serves as a means to enlighten and bring to the forefront the need for more corporations to rise to the same challenge. On behalf of every person on the SVBL team, I say this, we need to help each other now.”
Discussions regarding the potential contributions began since January 14 and the particular items were “specifically defined as priority by the CMO and [her] counterparts to enhance their current medical operations” here; as they try “to maintain their current pace of detection, processes of isolation, imposed mandatory quarantine, and support for those affected by the virus,”Country Manager London told the ceremony.
“It should be known that we stand firm in our decision at SVBL as a corporation of people to protect life. If the decisions today help to save even one life, it is a decision that was worth the spend. A spend which is in excess of $200,000 EC dollars – hardly a figure to consider in comparison to our aligned motive – protect and save lives,” she also said.