 Welcome to Nation Beat! I am General Norville bringing you this brief on the pulse of our nation and highlights around the heart of St. Glutia. The 28th edition of the Atlantic Rally for Cruisers is set for another successful sale to St. Glutia. Primary school mathematics is getting an overhaul and the Cerebral Palsy Association of St. Glutia receives a much-needed donation from one of the leading resorts on Ireland. The 28th edition of the Atlantic Rally for Cruisers, the act is set for another successful sale to St. Glutia. Over the years, the act has become a must-do for many sailors and attracts over 200 boats and 1,200 people every year to sail 2,700 nautical miles across the Atlantic from Gran Canaria to St. Glutia. The Atlantic Rally for Cruisers act is expected to start off with a bang as sponsors on Wednesday presented their generous contributions to events organizers, events company of St. Glutia Inc., ECSL in a check handing over ceremony. On board for this special event were key stakeholders including the St. Glutia Tourism Authority SLTA, IGY Rodney Bay Marina, Ministry of Tourism, ECSL St. Glutia Yacht Club, the Marine Industries Association of St. Glutia, the Art Planning Committee and the World Cruising Club. IGY Rodney Bay Marina's General Manager Sean Duvall expressed gratitude to sponsors. This year the World Cruising Club has committed to St. Glutia for another 5 years to bringing the art to St. Glutia and that's true testimony because we and heavily put onto your shoulders as sponsors of the event are doing something right. Once in St. Glutia, art participants, some of who are returning participants, immerse themselves in all things St. Glutia. From island tours, shopping expeditions to signature St. Glutia events like the ancillary and cruise illiterate parties, art participants are fully engaged, affording the island and its people the opportunity to display its exciting culture while benefiting from the increased commercial activity during that period. Event Manager for World Cruising Club Peter Cozier described St. Glutia as the perfect destination for the art. So I'd like to say to the sponsors new and old to have been going with us for years and supporting us, making sure everything works in St. Glutia for us coming in as has been said the work that goes into it, that's from you for us. And I'd like to say the synergy that works between the ARC, the ARC participants and St. Glutia itself is what makes this the perfect destination for the ARC. The ARC Flotilla is scheduled for Sunday November 25, 2018 and is set to sail at 10 a.m. from the IGY Rodney Bay Marina to the Castries Harbor, departing the Castries Harbor at noon and returning to the IGY Marina where a fun park's schedule of activities and local entertainment is planned for ARC Flotilla participants and the public from 1 p.m. SLTS Chief Communications Officer Clinton Reynolds highlighted the significance of tourism to St. Glutia's development. Tourism, as you know, is the lifeblood of St. Glutia and this is our main industry. What we like to say is having heads in beds. Obviously with the ARC it's not having heads in beds but having vessels in our ports. Local boat owners and sailing enthusiasts are invited to register to participate in ARC Flotilla 2018. Tourism officer in the Ministry of Tourism Information, Broadcasting, Culture and Creative Industries, Samantha Charles explained the importance for great synergies among entities within the yachting and tourism sector. I think we have to be mindful of the collaboration between those agencies that allow for a seamless and hassle-free process upon entry into our ports. So I speak of the Marine Police last per immigration, etc. For the main ARC event, it is expected that the first few boats will arrive in St. Glutia within 10 days of the departure from Las Palmas which is Sunday 25th November 2018. All participants are expected to arrive in St. Glutia between the 13th and 18th of December and stay into January 2019. At the time of this report, the World Cruising Club recorded some 300 boats registered to participate in the 2018 ARC race across the Atlantic to St. Glutia. Primary school mathematics is getting an overhaul. The recently released 6th edition of the Caribbean Primary Mathematics textbook contains new features to help students and educators overcome the many challenges of learning math. More from Alicia Ali. The Curriculum and Materials Development Unit, CAMDU, hosted a sensitization workshop with education stakeholders on the new edition of the math textbook. Curriculum Officer for Mathematics at CAMDU, Johnella Gifford, called the event a success, indicating she expects to see positive results in the near future. The structure of the book is slightly different and I think it was necessary that everybody got that initiation into how to go about using the contents of the books with the students in the schools. Based on the aura and the feedback that we actually got from that workshop, I think that we're heading in the right direction. I think that our teachers actually want more activities like this because the workshop lent itself to our teachers, sorry, our educators, engaging in problem solving. The new Caribbean Primary Mathematics series includes material to help both the students and the teachers learn math. Publish of the new series, Hodder Education Publishers was present at the workshop. Their representative, Katie Mackenzie Stewart, explained the new features and how it can be used. Looking at some of the issues that are current in learning maths, how we can help pupils more generally beyond the series itself, but things about broadening their depths of understanding of maths. Being able to make connections between different areas of maths, setting them more open challenges and using their math skills in a wider range of situations. This sensitization workshop is part of the Department of Education, Innovation and Gender Relations continuous efforts to boost student performance in mathematics. From the Communications Unit in the Ministry of Education, Innovation, Gender Relations and Sustainable Development, I am Alicia Alley. Human Resource Management Specialist Dr. Jocelyn Clarke Fletcher has been appointed to serve as an ambassador in the office of the Prime Minister with responsibility for diaspora affairs. The post has been in existence since 2008 and was last held by Dr. June Sumer, who served from 2008 to 2015. As ambassador for diaspora affairs, her Excellency Dr. Jocelyn Clarke Fletcher will coordinate government's efforts at not only consolidating the various inclusion overseas-based associations and organizations, but also help non-resident nationals discover how they can directly invest in their homeland. Explaining the policies on what we are doing and how we want to encourage them, tell them what is the benefit of coming and returning, and if you can't return, then contribute, invest, give. That is what we are going to do, reach out. We have been, the government has been, governments have been, and we intend to continue in a broader way. Ambassador Clarke Fletcher says creating viable linkages over St. Lucian's residing overseas is one-stop-gap measure to the brain drain being experienced by St. Lucia. By reaching out to the diaspora, they'll need a rise in our country. We can take that harness, that skill out there, and invite them, lower them back home, so that they understand our culture, they understand the way we do things, and they can give back to their country in that way as well. So apart from investing in our country, they can, and all the help that they give to us when there is disasters and so on, we can also give them that avenue to come back and serve in their own country. You know, they come back for leisure and so on. Sometimes you don't understand the remittances that come from them when they come home and visit their families or send money home to their families. That is a big thing and it is important to quantify that in the development of our country. Ambassador in the office of the Prime Minister with responsibility for diaspora affairs, her Excellency Dr. Joss Lynn Fletcher. An immediate project for the ambassador is a special homecoming in commemoration of the island's 40th anniversary of independence. This is Nation Beat when we return the cerebral palsy association of St. Lucia receives a much-needed donation from one of the leading results on island. You may contact your National Telecommunications Regulatory Commission, NTRC. This message is brought to you as a public service announcement by Ectel, the NTRC, and this station. Welcome back. Parents with children living with cerebral palsy in St. Lucia will soon be eligible for relief thanks to a recent donation by the Body Holiday Care Foundation. A small ceremony with stakeholders of the Hotel and the Cerebral Palsy Association of St. Lucia took place at the Body Holiday to commemorate the new partnership. Cerebral palsy, often referred to by its acronym CP, is a lifelong condition that affects a child's movement, motor skills, and muscle tone. According to the Cerebral Palsy Association of St. Lucia, there are over 100 cases of children living with the condition, a condition which not only impacts the children but also their parents because of the high cost implications involved. In cases of the children, they need seizure medication, they need constant therapy, they need, as we said earlier, the equipment. And these are things that, if they don't have it, can actually really give, it can really be a strain. It can really be a lot for a parent to deal with because the children don't learn in what is considered to be a normal pattern. Our systems are not equipped, we don't have proper assistive devices so that they could probably express themselves because a lot of them cannot speak, but it doesn't mean that they don't understand, but what our systems have cannot facilitate their learning. So as a parent, it can be very, very... In response to this need, the Body Holiday donated a total of 50,000 EC dollars to the Cerebral Palsy Association. Deputy Manager and Director of the Resort, Andrew Bernard, says that the aim of the CARES Foundation is to change people's lives one person at a time. We very much know all the programs that we're taking and we're trying to take a holistic approach, as Jackie said, so that the support is not, is sustainable because we want to make sure that we can carry on giving, that all the stakeholders involved, our guests are donating, we're fundraising events with our guests helping to build a real sustainable foundation that can support year on year on year. As a parent raising a child with CP and an employee of the Body Holiday herself, Kelly Louis Volney says that the initiative could not have been timely. My little girl is nine years old and I have been struggling with her from the day she was born. And when I wake up in the morning, I lift her from her bed and I walk to the shower with her. I get wet because there's nothing I could do to put her in to stand to help me give her a bath. With the wheelchair that I will be getting for her, she will be able to go to school because the bus requires for her to have a wheelchair to take her to school. She's very adventurous. She likes to go out. She likes to go anywhere. She would drag a little self to the door when she sees the kids playing and she wants to play too. But, you know, she has a lot of limitations because she can't walk, she can't speak and she has problems with her legs. And it's recently she's having pain in her legs and I knew that wheelchair is going to come along with me. One of the things that we must do as a society is to ensure that mothers and fathers don't need to feel quite so lonely when learning to cope with that new reality. The risks and dangers of caregiver burnout are serious and the caregivers themselves deserve all the support we can give them for them to remain strong and stay resilient for all the years to come. The CARES Foundation is a joint collaboration between the Body Holiday and Rondevu St. Lucia and focuses on three main areas of priority, mental health, education and vision. From the Government Information Service, Lisa Joseph reporting. That's Nation Beat. Join us next time on NTN at 7.30pm with a repeat at 7.30am and on this station as we fill the pulse and heart of our community. You can also catch up with us anytime on the St Lucia Government Facebook page or YouTube channel. I am General Norville.