For the longest time, Caribbean Heritage Month has been celebrated in the course of the month of June. Whereas communities honor their Caribbean heritage with Junkanoo festivals, metal drum bands, and meals vehicles serving jerk hen and Crimson Stripes, let’s acknowledge the apparent: There’s no higher place to dwell, breathe, and rejoice Caribbean heritage than on the identical islands the place it originates — and which by no coincidence are house to all 24 Sandals and Beaches Resorts.
Friends of Sandals and Seashores can hear the true Caribbean spirit within the accents of crew members and see it of their pure smiles. It’s all the time current. That’s as a result of nearly all of the crew members company-wide work in the identical communities the place they grew up studying to swim, cook dinner, create, sing, and, above all, make others really feel at house with their quintessential heat hospitality.
Pictured right here: Crew members at Sandals Royal Curaçao.
Sandals Resorts’ founder, the late Gordon “Butch” Stewart, constructed Sandals and Seashores on the very similar precept of hospitality that he discovered from his personal neighbors as a younger boy rising up in Jamaica. His son, Sandals Resorts’ Govt Chairman, Adam Stewart, now carries out that dedication as a Sixth-generation Jamaican.
“The Caribbean lifestyle is embedded in my soul,” Stewart says. “Phrases are merely not sufficient to clarify our heritage, that is why we’d reasonably invite individuals into it – as a result of attending to expertise the Caribbean… now that’s the place the actual magic occurs.”
Of all of the Caribbean influences on cultural experiences all through the world (reggae beats, rum punch, and robust Blue Mountain Coffee, to call a couple of), treating one another like household might very nicely be probably the most profound of all. And the groups at Sandals and Seashores have accomplished extra to construct that popularity than at another resort model.
“There’s nothing like the sweetness that permeates the area — the individuals, the meals, the artwork, the character,” Stewart says, “which is why we take each alternative to rejoice it and share our 4 corners of the Caribbean with the world.”
In June, these are a couple of methods Sandals and Seashores took the unending celebration of Caribbean heritage to a different degree.
A Celebration of Caribbean Nature
Each time anybody refers back to the Caribbean with phrases like “magic” or “magnificence,” the thoughts instantly conjures photographs of the colourful sea, the plush mountains, and timber stuffed with beautiful fruit. The surroundings provides life, a undeniable fact that evokes all 18,000 workers of Sandals, Seashores, and the Sandals Basis to be personally dedicated to preserving it.
Within the Caribbean, a ‘house’ will not be merely a home or a room. House is within the sands, the breeze, and the ocean – and the whole lot round it’s essential to the very existence of Caribbean individuals and their heritage.
Pictured right here: The Sandals Basis helps marine sanctuaries throughout the Caribbean in an effort to safeguard marine ecosystems for future generations.
As destiny would have it, World Oceans Day comes each June 8, throughout Caribbean Heritage Month. This 12 months, every time a visitor booked a Sandals or Beaches vacation on World Oceans Day, the corporate donated $100 to island packages by means of the Sandals Basis. This system instantly improves the Caribbean ecosystem by means of coral restoration, mangrove planting, marine sanctuary training, turtle conservation, lionfish culling, and seashore cleanups.
Pictured right here: Two divers at Sandals Resorts swimming by means of a vibrant coral reef.
A Celebration of Caribbean Tradition
Patrice Gilpin is the Director of Public Relations for the Sandals Foundation. In a dialog throughout Caribbean Heritage Month, you would hear in her voice the eagerness of a caring neighbor when she stated, “We wish to remodel as many lives as we are able to in each neighborhood.”
One of the highly effective transformations is occurring by means of an artisan program that empowers island craftsmen and craftswomen to make a residing by creatively utilizing their arms, their native sources, and their appreciation for heritage. “The extra visitors we’ve got on the resorts, the extra lives we are able to remodel,” says Gilpin. “They make it potential for us to enter the communities and share enterprise administration abilities, product growth abilities, and advertising abilities.”
Pictured right here: An area artisan crafting bracelets, necklaces and different jewelery.
With that in thoughts and in honor of Caribbean Heritage Month, Sandals and Seashores launched its ‘Rhythm and Blues Caribbean Sale’, providing plenty of incentives to get extra visitors to expertise the Caribbean islands – from air credit as much as $500 to $150 in spa credit on the award-winning Crimson Lane® Spa on eligible bookings.
As Gilpin stated, extra visitors means extra good for the Caribbean. The attain of that goodness extends far past the seashores and swimming pools, to untraveled villages and rural areas the place distinctive arts and crafts are being matched with extra function.
“The favourite a part of my job,” says Karen Zacca, Director of Operations for the Sandals Basis, “is once I go as much as the mountains to attach the craftsmen and craftswomen to resort visitors by means of their work. Now these artisans are capable of prepare younger individuals to allow them to ultimately stick with it the native traditions.”
Pictured right here: The Sandals Basis empowers Caribbean artisans with abilities to create, market, and distribute their crafts.
Zacca’s household heritage on the islands traces again greater than a century. One among her drives takes her into Jamaica’s foothills the place women and men have been weaving baskets, purses, and hats with a uncommon kind of grass that grows right here. The route from right here to there passes by means of an outpost known as Grateful Hill.
“Good, isn’t it?” Zacca says of the identify. “That’s been the angle on the island for so long as I can bear in mind. These individuals specific their gratitude by means of stunning crafts. We will present a platform. And resort visitors can take one thing house to be reminded of the heat and fantastic thing about our Caribbean tradition.”
Pictured right here: A craftmaker in Turks & Caicos holding a hand-crafted bag.
A Celebration of Caribbean Life
For Sandals and Seashores Resorts, celebrating Caribbean Heritage is celebrating the Caribbean lifestyle. It’s the attractive ocean, the rhythmic accents, the distinct tastes, the pure nature, and the loving individuals. However you possibly can’t totally perceive what Caribbean heritage means till you’re immersed in it. As a result of right here, heritage doesn’t come and go together with the pages of a calendar. It’s superbly alive, each second of day-after-day.