Sweet Water Foundation offers heartfelt condolences to Butch Stewart’s family, and to his team of visionaries at the Sandals Foundation in Jamaica.
Sandals Foundation has partnered with us since 2015, remaining stalwartly at our side through many global shifts and crises, including the current Covid-19 pandemic.
The Sweet Water Foundation is one of the few agencies in the Caribbean with a sole focus on child sexual abuse. As an NGO which relies entirely upon donors to keep our research, educational and therapeutic services open, at the cutting edge, and available to a general Caribbean public, we struggle for financing every step of the way. We have felt extremely privileged to come under the benevolence of Sandals Foundation. We have discovered over time that very few international corporations seem to care for the social issues of populations where they do business, but with Sandals Foundation, there was clearly an opposite point of view from the start. Under Butch Stewart’s leadership, the Sandals Foundation married good business with good philanthropy and supported our group psychotherapy programme for child victims of sexual abuse, and our Child Helpline, from their inception.
The Helpline began with taking calls from local Grenadians who needed free, online, confidential and anonymous counselling from professionals in the field of psychology. Thanks to our audio, visual, billboard and social media campaigns, all financed by Butch Stewart at the Sandals Foundation, we now have a client base that reaches us via telephone calls, emails, text and WhatsApp correspondence from around the world, in English and Spanish.
Butch Stewart’s son described his Dad primarily as a family man, and lastly as a Dreamer. Sweet Water Foundation is also primarily concerned with the psychological wellbeing of families, and we, as the pioneering NGO for child abuse in the Caribbean, we are also dreamers. We thank Butch Stewart and his philanthropic dream for his support of our child protection objectives over the past 6 years. We express deep sympathy to all those who knew him, came under the beneficence of his epic generosity, and have now lost him. We wish him eternal peace in all the realms”.
Hazel Da Breo
Director, Sweet Water Foundation
