BO­BIE-LEE DIXON

(bo­bie-lee.dixon@guardian.co.tt

T&T so­ca artists will come to­geth­er on Fri­day to host a telethon to as­sist in re­lief ef­forts for St Vin­cent and the Grenadines, (SVG) as the is­land con­tin­ues to bat­tle chal­lenges caused by the erup­tion of the La Soufriere vol­cano.

Spear­head­ing the ini­tia­tive are Bun­ji Gar­lin (Ian Al­varez) and his wife Fay-Ann Lyons-Al­varez. In a tele­phone in­ter­view, Lyons-Al­varez told Guardian Me­dia St Vin­cent and the Grenadines had giv­en much to the lo­cal so­ca fra­ter­ni­ty. She said while they could not be there to phys­i­cal­ly sup­port the peo­ple of that coun­try, the fra­ter­ni­ty un­der­stood it could use the tal­ents and fan base of its mem­bers to mo­bilise as much sup­port as it could to send re­lief to SVG.

Lyons-Al­varez said artists were all rear­ing and ready to go for Fri­day with sev­er­al al­ready sign­ing on to the ini­tia­tive.

"We spoke to Machel . . . Machel is on board. We spoke to Voice . . . Voice on board. Patrice, Drue, Swap­pi. Every­body. I mean the artists un­der­stand and every­body's been wait­ing for some­thing that will bring us all to­geth­er that we can show sol­i­dar­i­ty for St Vin­cent," Lyons-Al­varez said.

She said help­ing St Vin­cent was like help­ing fam­i­ly.

"We do have a love for St Vin­cent and Skin­ny Fab­u­lous, Prob­lem Child and all of them, they have been writ­ing mu­sic and per­form­ing and do­ing col­lab­o­ra­tions with some of our artists here. So the re­la­tion­ship is there. I mean we know Lu­ta and Fire­man Hoop­er and all these dif­fer­ent artists we have been work­ing with over the years, so it's not like we do not per­son­al­ly know a lot of these artists. We have a con­nec­tion with them...we talk to them when we go to St Vin­cent. We vis­it them, we have lunch..din­ner...we lime we hang out. So it's al­most like you're see­ing part of your ex­tend­ed fam­i­ly in per­il."

The telethon is be­ing host­ed in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the lo­cal NGO Is There Not A Cause (ITNAC), which is head­ed by Avonelle Hec­tor-Joseph.

Lyons-Al­varez ap­pealed to so­cial me­dia users to stop crit­i­cis­ing those who are do­nat­ing in what­ev­er ca­pac­i­ty they can. She said in such a time of cri­sis, every bit of sup­port helps, even if that came in the form of a sin­gle bot­tle of wa­ter. She said it was un­for­tu­nate to see neg­a­tive com­ments on so­cial me­dia be­ing made of re­lief ren­dered by mem­bers of the pub­lic and that was very dis­cour­ag­ing.

While the telethon will be host­ed on Fri­day, Lyons-Al­varez said the venue is not yet fi­nalised but the pub­lic will be up­dat­ed as the week pro­gress­es.