When Super Yacht Chief Stewardess Joanne Farrell decided she wanted to do something special for her birthday and visit an orphanage, she found this one in Nassau.
Now Joanne, other crew members from the super yacht At Lastalong with their local provisioner are frequent visitors and make regular contributors to the home.The organisation assisting these children is called Ambassador Chorale International Association, run by Reverend Michael Bullard.
Rev. Bullard provides a service to the community by taking in orphaned children, as well as providing a care center for children to come to on a temporary basis.
Some children are dropped off at the care centre by their parents when they are unable to take care of the child, and may be collected again at a later stage.
The care centre is not state subsidised and, therefore relies solely on support from the community.
At Last is based in Nassau and her crew visit the home whenever they can to play with the children, take toys to them, as well as other donations and most importantly, spend valuable time with them as big sisters and brothers.
There are always anywhere between 18 and 30 children present at a time. The majority of the children reside at the orphanage, but some faces will change from time to time.
The ages range anywhere from 2 years old right up to 18 years of age.
Through discussions with Reverend Bullard, they identify what physical needs the home has, such as beds, linens, bathing products, generators, wheelbarrows to remove rubble, etc. The crew raise funds any way they can: collecting donations from friends, pooling a percentage of charter gratuities, etc. in order to purchase the items needed.
They prefer to show our support in this fashion, as opposed to handing over the cash. This way, they can rest assured that the money will always be used to the benefit of the children, irrespective of who their caretakers are. The most recent acquisition was a generator.
At Last is available for charter in the Bahamas year round through Els Bucknell at Churchill Yacht Partners