‘Bubbles & Benevolence’ marks start of WAND’s 2026 events

Women in Ac­tion for the Needy and Des­ti­tute (WAND) Foun­da­tion opened its 2026 fundrais­ing sea­son on Sat­ur­day with its Bub­bles & Benev­o­lence – A Tea Par­ty Af­fair at the new­ly opened Le Rêve at C3, Corinth, San Fer­nan­do.

Guests were greet­ed by a Bridger­ton-in­spired set­ting that set an el­e­gant tone for the af­ter­noon.

In­side the venue, live cel­lo mu­sic by Wa­sia Ward added to the at­mos­phere as guests moved be­tween tea, treats and glass­es of bub­bles.

The mood shift­ed from re­fined to live­ly as en­ter­tain­er An­cil Val­ley took to the stage, draw­ing the crowd in­to sing-alongs and mo­ments of danc­ing that loos­ened the oth­er­wise for­mal pace of the event.

Bridger­ton-themed games kept guests en­gaged through­out the af­ter­noon, with laugh­ter and light com­pe­ti­tion spilling across the room. Door prizes and raf­fle win­nings, do­nat­ed by spon­sors and sup­port­ers, added to the sense of oc­ca­sion as win­ners were called and ta­bles re­act­ed with good-na­tured ex­cite­ment.

WAND pres­i­dent Aman­da Jar­dine used the oc­ca­sion to briefly re­flect on the or­gan­i­sa­tion’s work un­der its Gift of Sight ini­tia­tive, not­ing that 49 surg­eries had been fa­cil­i­tat­ed for the year 2026, rep­re­sent­ing more than TT$700,000 in sup­port for pa­tients.

One of the af­ter­noon’s stand­out mo­ments came with an un­ex­pect­ed $25,000 do­na­tion from Eye See You Oph­thalmics, pre­sent­ed by Sunil and Na­dine Moonasar as the com­pa­ny marked its 15th an­niver­sary.

The com­pa­ny has been a long­stand­ing part­ner of WAND, sup­port­ing the ini­tia­tive through sub­sidised sur­gi­cal sup­plies used in pro­ce­dures car­ried out un­der the pro­gramme.

The event al­so dou­bled as a soft launch of WAND’s up­com­ing cal­en­dar, with dates con­firmed for its Golf Tour­na­ment on June 28, Den­im & Di­a­monds on Sep­tem­ber 19, and its Christ­mas Lun­cheon on No­vem­ber 13.

As the af­ter­noon wound down, the em­pha­sis re­turned to ap­pre­ci­a­tion—for spon­sors, vol­un­teers and sup­port­ers whose con­tri­bu­tions, or­gan­is­ers said, con­tin­ue to sus­tain WAND’s char­i­ta­ble work across Trinidad and To­ba­go.