Basseterre, St. Kitts, April 16, 2019 (SKNIS)—Philanthropists Mickey Weintraub and Connie J. Jaynes are decrying propaganda being peddled that humanitarian aid that arrived in St. Kitts and Nevis on April 6, 2019, aboard US Airforce C17 cargo plane, is as a result of rampant poverty in the country.
Mr. Weintraub is the President of Mickey’s Hope and Mrs. Jaynes is the President of A Time 4US Foundation. Both community-based organizations have been doing incredible charity work in the Federation, including facilitating the humanitarian aid that recently came into the country.
“Because I have been doing this for 28 years and I’ve been out with the people in the country so much, I was very upset about this because it should not have been anything that was politicized,” said Mr. Weintraub.
“Hurricanes, earthquakes, cancer—they don’t know red, yellow, orange…In the 28 years I’ve been helping people, neither of us, we’ve never asked somebody are you PAM, are you Labour, are you Team Unity. The only thing that matter is they’re human beings…these are my brothers and sisters. This is my family. All that matter is that someone is hurting and is in need and you try and help them, so I was very upset that to try to politicize something like this is just a terrible thing in my opinion,” he added.
Mrs. Jaynes said that the philanthropic work that they do is not for any recognition whatsoever.
“We don’t set out to do things publicly. My husband and I are proud to say that we became citizens of the Federation in December. That was a conscious choice. We chose to be a part of this Federation because of the people, because of the culture, because people love and help each other we’re here. We didn’t establish the foundation to have a bunch of hoopla, to have a bunch of pats on the back or whatever, but I’m happy to be here today because we don’t want this to be something that gets blown out of proportion,” said Mrs. Jaynes.
“We don’t want something good to become bad because we need all charitable organizations, all NGO’s, all community-based organizations working together. It’s a partnership. No one entity, person or group can do it on its own. I don’t care if it’s a church; I don’t care if it’s a government; I don’t care if it’s a foundation—no matter how big or how much money there is, we need each other, and we need to work together and so we need that to continue, and not this other kind of stuff,” Mrs. Jaynes said.
The humanitarian aid came to the Federation through the Denton Program.
The Denton Program allows private U.S. citizens and organizations to use space available on U.S. military cargo planes to transport humanitarian goods to countries in need including agricultural equipment, clothing, educational supplies, food, medical supplies and vehicles.
The program is jointly administered by USAID, the Department of State (DOS), the Defense Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA) and the Department of Defense (DoD); although DSCA is the primary agency responsible for administering the program.
