Christophe Harbour VP of Operations Jon Gersonde and Hands Across The Sea Founder Harriet Linskey with Cayon Primary students.

No one knew that when Harriet and Tom “T.L.” Linskey walked through the door of the real estates sales office five years ago looking for Wi-Fi that one chance meeting would lead to a long-term partnership in improving literacy throughout the Federation.

“We had just come from Antigua where we were encouraged by our efforts with libraries there,” said T.L. “I shared a story of one little girl who couldn’t read but came running up to me with a brand new book we’d delivered saying ‘I want to learn!’ We all had tears in our eyes by the time the story was over, and I knew then that we’d found a partner in Christophe Harbour.”

The Linskeys are co-founders of Hands Across the Sea, a non-profit charitable organization dedicated to raising the literacy levels of Caribbean children. They have been working in the Caribbean for 10 years operating in most of the OECS member countries and in the Federation specifically for eight years.

 “Our goal is to improve children’s literacy in St. Kitts and Nevis and across the OECS countries,” said Harriet. “We do that by sending great new books to schools, both primary and secondary, creating or rejuvenating lending libraries, then following-up with support and on-going training to sustain the libraries.”

Christophe Harbour Foundation’s support allows Hands to bring on new schools in both St. Kitts and Nevis and to expand the quality of assistance provided to existing school libraries. The partnership with Hands has given Christophe Harbour an arm to reach further into the community and to have a direct impact where it matters most for its employees and their families.

“We polled our staff directly to get an understanding of which areas, in their opinion, needed the most literacy support,” said Katherine Verano, Director of Marketing for Christophe Harbour. “Armed with that information, we were able to work with Hands to expand support into new areas, like Cayon, for example.”

Now that Cayon High has a freshly stocked and re-organized library, there is a cadre of Form 1 (7th grade) boys milling around outside the library 30 minutes before school starts waiting for the librarian to open the door to the new books.  These students want to read!

This year marks the 4th in the partnership between Christophe Harbour and Hands Across the Sea.