'NPO Spotlight' offering a look inside the NPOs of St. Maarten

‘NPO Spotlight’ offers the reader a glance into the varied and multifaceted world of Nonprofit Organizations (NPOs) on St. Maarten. Building a nation is always a mammoth task and globally NPOs have often taken the giant’s share of the work and St. Maarten is no different. For the first ‘NPO Spotlight’ Foresee Foundation will be showcased to encourage more NPOs to register to participate.

Established in 2018 as a unique and evolving response to the need for facilitating greater output, cooperation and effectiveness of the already very active NPO community on St. Maarten, NPOwer is a community-based project falling under auspices of Foresee Foundation. One of the foundation’s goals is to highlight the important role of NPOs.

St. Maarten has a large number of NPOs. Most of them are relatively small organizations that function with volunteers and/or have less than ten [10] employed persons. Considering the critical role they play in the community, the local NPOs have indicated that there is a need for support in terms of marketing, capacity strengthening and awareness.

This need prompted Foresee Foundation, with funding from Samenwerkende Fondsen, to add this to their NPOwer initiative as part of a series of programs that include ‘NPO Spotlight’. The weekly publication of this column in The Daily Herald’s Weekender is in collaboration with the selected featured NPO and The Daily Herald.

“It is our fervent hope the NPOs showcased in our ‘NPO Spotlight’ enlighten, motivate and empower the relevant change, awareness, activism and evolution needed for the continued development of St. Maarten,” said President of Foresee Foundation Leonaris Lloyd.

The NPOs featured, in what will be the weekly space, is dedicated to highlighting groups and initiatives that makes this island a better place and were selected from NPOwer’s online NPO database.  “This database is an ever-growing machine that will one day smoothly connect people to purpose in a way that will exponentially benefit our island,” said the group’s Marketing Director Alston Lourens. NPOs that are currently not part of the database are urged to register via www.npowersxm.com.  

This series of publications via ‘NPO Spotlight’ serves to also connect the people of St. Maarten to initiatives and groups that would inspire volunteerism. “We are a small nation that must learn to embrace the need and value of volunteerism,” Lourens said adding, “over the years, we have facilitated a range of volunteer events, however nothing compared to the work and initiatives our featured NPOs have accomplished over the many years of their existence on St Maarten.”

‘NPO Spotlight’ aims to showcase their continued efforts to build our nation.