Dix­ie-Ann Dick­son

In keep­ing with their cor­po­rate so­cial re­spon­si­bil­i­ty com­mit­ment in ad­dress­ing women's is­sues, First Cit­i­zens bank has launched its pink visa cred­it card, de­scribed as "a card for a cause"-on Fri­day as a mea­sure to­wards end­ing vi­o­lence against women. The launch, which took place at the Trinidad Hilton ho­tel, St Ann's, seek to em­pow­er women as they con­tin­ue to break bar­ri­ers and play a greater role in so­ci­ety. Sharon Christo­pher, deputy chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of First Cit­i­zens, said the lo­cal bank would be lead­ing this ini­tia­tive by pledg­ing $200,000 every year to the PINK card fund.

Mean­while, cit­i­zens have the op­por­tu­ni­ty to pledge any amount of their choice of ei­ther $25, $50, $75 or $100 month­ly, dur­ing the cred­it card ap­pli­ca­tion process. While the PINK cred­it card op­er­ates in the same cat­e­go­ry as a the Visa clas­sic cred­it card, cus­tomers would en­joy a cash back re­ward of 0.75 per cent of their pur­chase val­ue, in ad­di­tion to the nor­mal ben­e­fits from the Visa card. Christo­pher ex­plained that the month­ly con­tri­bu­tions would be de­posit­ed in a PINK card fund and the mon­ey would be dis­bursed twice a year to "three well-es­tab­lished" non-gov­ern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tions-Coali­tion Against Do­mes­tic Vi­o­lence, The Rape Cri­sis So­ci­ety of T&T and Fam­i­lies in Ac­tion-to as­sist in the fund­ing of their op­er­a­tions and pro­grammes, which aim to end vi­o­lence against women."

A heart­ened Christo­pher is al­so en­cour­ag­ing the cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ty to fol­low in the bank's lead in cre­at­ing more op­por­tu­ni­ties in giv­ing back to the cit­i­zen­ry. She said in a so­ci­ety that has grown con­tent with ex­er­cis­ing em­pa­thy and then abrupt­ly "clos­ing the door"- re­quires a sus­tain­able step in help­ing women heal. "Our aim has al­ways been and con­tin­ues to be the need to up­lift women and to pro­vide op­por­tu­ni­ties that will help them to pos­i­tive­ly im­pact T&T, by ex­ten­sion, the world," said Christo­pher.