Jo-Marie Za­k­our has been re-elect­ed as the Pres­i­dent of the Syr­i­an Lebanese Women’s As­so­ci­a­tion (SLWA) for 2022.

The As­so­ci­a­tion held its an­nu­al elec­tions on Feb­ru­ary 16th, where Jo-Marie Za­k­our was cho­sen to serve a third term as pres­i­dent of the or­ga­ni­za­tion.

“A team of 14 de­ter­mined women was elect­ed to make up this year’s [2022] com­mit­tee, in­clud­ing some re­turn­ing as well as some new mem­bers,” a re­lease from the or­gan­i­sa­tion said. ‘

“The 2022 Pres­i­dent and com­mit­tee have big plans ahead,” the re­lease not­ed.  “They look for­ward to con­tin­u­ing work­ing and serv­ing this na­tion for the com­ing year.”

Dur­ing her re­view of the past year, pres­i­dent Za­k­our and mem­bers of the 2021 com­mit­tee ex­pressed grat­i­tude for what they had been able to achieve in their var­i­ous ef­forts and projects.

Ms Za­k­our re­port­ed that do­na­tions to­talling over $600,000 were giv­en to over 60 wor­thy cas­es for 2021 in­clud­ing: month­ly feed­ing ham­pers to over 50 fam­i­lies; med­ical ex­pens­es; ed­u­ca­tion­al sup­port; hous­ing as­sis­tance; the as­so­ci­a­tion’s an­nu­al Christ­mas ham­per project where 1,500 ham­pers are packed and dis­trib­uted across the na­tion; as well as oth­er wor­thy caus­es.

“While it has been a chal­leng­ing year, I am over­whelmed by the sup­port and gen­eros­i­ty from all of our part­ners, fam­i­ly and friends, sup­port­ing cit­i­zens of Trinidad and To­ba­go and mem­bers of the Syr­i­an Lebanese Women’s As­so­ci­a­tion. I would like to thank them for giv­ing so freely of their time and re­sources,” Mrs. Za­k­our stat­ed.

Ac­cord­ing to the re­lease, a key fo­cus of the SLWA over the last year has been fight­ing hunger and feed­ing the na­tion. The or­ga­ni­za­tion was able to part­ner with Ar­cos Do­ra­dos to dis­trib­ute over $150,000 worth of frozen food items across the coun­try.  It al­so cooked and dis­trib­uted 455 meals as part of its an­nu­al ‘Love All, Serve All’ project, which went di­rect­ly to feed­ing the home­less through­out Port of Spain. 

An­oth­er ma­jor ini­tia­tive was “Feed the Need”, in which it part­nered with the trans­port and food de­liv­ery ser­vice food­DROP, which en­abled users of the app to do­nate $5, $10 and $20 dur­ing the check­out process.

The SLWA al­so launched a new ‘Hand­bag Project’ in 2021, where 40 hand­bags filled with much need­ed items for women were packed and dis­trib­uted to women at dif­fer­ent do­mes­tic vi­o­lence shel­ters in the coun­try.

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•About the Syr­i­an Lebanese Women’s As­so­ci­a­tion•

Found­ed in 1950, the Syr­i­an Lebanese Women's As­so­ci­a­tion is an NGO whose main mis­sion is to bring women to­geth­er to help our fel­low cit­i­zens in need. Our mem­ber­ship of 350 and count­ing, are com­mit­ted to as­sist­ing the poor, sick, and needy through ef­forts that con­tribute more than half a mil­lion dol­lars an­nu­al­ly.  The Syr­i­an Lebanese Women's As­so­ci­a­tion has helped those in need in var­i­ous ways over the last 72 years.