The Conduit Foundation

Founded in 1978, Big Brothers Big Sisters of Bermuda is a charity which provides a mentoring programme dedicated to helping youth, primarily from single parent homes, realise their potential by facilitating the development of long-term one-on-one relationships.

The Conduit Foundation backs the charity’s positive impact in supporting those who are found in disadvantaged positions, and bringing together individuals from diverse parts of society. 

This supports our Foundation’s objective of advancement of citizenship or community development and the advancement of equality.

Year supported: 2022

Website: http://www.bbbs.bm/   

On receipt of the funds, Patrina O’Connor Paynter, managing director of Big Brothers Big Sisters of Bermuda, said:

"These funds go directly towards expanding our Boys 2 Men and Girl Power programmes which help to strengthen and empower our youth helping them to reach their full potential. On behalf of the children we serve, thank you so much."

Patrina O’Connor Paynter Managing director of Big Brothers Big Sisters of Bermuda

The Bermuda Red Cross was formed in 1950 as a branch of the British Red Cross Society. Originally a Nursing Reserve, it has grown over the years to provide other community-based programmes focusing on the most vulnerable.  The charity provides health and safety courses to educate the public in basic First Aid, CPR AED use, pool lifeguarding and psychosocial first aid response. It also provides free transport for seniors for medical appointments as well as disaster management. During the COVID pandemic, the charity faced an unprecedented volume of requests and costs which lead to an urgent appeal for financial support.

The Foundation responded to this appeal to ensure the charity can continue to provide community health and safety training and outreach programmes. 

This supports our Foundation’s objectives of advancement of education and advancement of health or saving of lives.

Year supported: 2022

Website: https://bermudaredcross.com/

Bermuda College recently launched an Electric Vehicle Mechanics Programme. As Bermuda residents seek to reduce their carbon emissions, there has been an increase in demand for electric vehicles. This programme upskills those currently in the automotive industry, as well as incoming students, in repair and maintenance of electric and hybrid cars.

Conduit chose to sponsor the Bermuda College Foundation Electric Vehicle Mechanics programme to provide training and access to jobs whilst supporting the transition to less polluting vehicles. While the commitment was made in 2022, funding is from 2023 to 2026.

This supports our Foundation’s objectives of advancement of education.

Year supported: 2023, 2024, 2025, 2026

The Bermuda Sloop Foundation was founded in 2006 to ensure Bermuda’s youth increase their long-term chances of success. By being immersed in an environment fostering positive behaviour, boosting individual resilience, and cultivating critical life skills, young people of Bermuda are better prepared to meet life’s challenges, overcome adversity with confidence and avoid antisocial behaviour.

Our donation supports the youth programme onboard the Spirit of Bermuda and provides Bermuda’s youth with important educational and development opportunity outside of the traditional school environment.

This supports our Foundation’s objectives of advancement of education and advancement of arts, culture, heritage or science.

Year supported: 2022

Website: https://bermudasloop.org/

The Friends of Christchurch Feeding Programme provide meaningful results in the community by feeding families currently in crisis in Bermuda. The programme serves two to three hundred meals each day, six days per week.

Our Foundation seeks to support those in our local community, especially those in crisis.

This supports our Foundation’s objectives of prevention or relief of poverty.

Year supported: 2022

Vision Bermuda is dedicated to empowering people who are blind or vision impaired to learn how to live well with vision loss. They help people with no and low vision to maintain independence, learn new skills, participate in social and physical activities to reduce loneliness and isolation. They provide a range of services, classes, social activities and events, including vision rehabilitation therapy, orientation and mobility support, assistive technology and equipment information and training, small group training workshops and many more.

This supports our Foundation’s objectives of advancement of health or saving of lives.

Year supported: 2022

Website: https://visionbermuda.bm/

SCARS stands for Saving Children And Revealing Secrets. SCARS is Bermuda’s only child sexual abuse prevention charity organisation. It was formed to create greater awareness of the devastation that child sexual abuse can cause in the life of a child, a family and a community. SCARS offers, at no cost to the community, prevention training, awareness programmes and informational resources for healing.

In addition to our Charitable Event Sponsorship Donation to Kayak4Kids 2022 Event in September, we also provided a donation to SCARS directly to allow them to continue their advocacy work and to continue offering their training programmes free of charge. We also made SCARS training available to our staff, many of whom attended.

This supports our Foundation’s objectives of advancement of health or saving of lives and the advancement of education.

Year supported: 2022

Website: https://www.scarsbermuda.com/

The mission of P.A.L.S. is to provide cancer patients with quality care, primarily in the home setting, to enhance quality of life. P.A.L.S. provides medical equipment and services to insured and uninsured patients. Additionally, they can help with hospital bills, living expenses and medical services while patients undergo cancer treatment.

This year Conduit provided funds to assist with the employment of two nurses to provide patient care at home.

This supports our Foundation’s objectives of advancement of health or saving of lives and relief to those in need because of ill-health.

Year supported: 2022

Website:  https://pals.bm/

Bermuda’s Living Reefs work to keep Bermuda's reefs and the marine life they support healthy. Living Reefs launched its Coral Garden Initiative in 2016.  They aim to develop a tourism/conservation partnership to ensure the sustainable conservation of the Atlantic's northernmost reefs. Their work is based on scientific studies, and their goal is to restore damaged reefs using innovative and state of the art techniques for a range of boulder and branching coral species. 

Conduit supports Living Reefs to help protect our environment against stresses, such as temperature changes, acidification, pollution and overfishing.

This supports our Foundation’s objectives of advancement of environmental protection or improvement and the advancement of education.

Year supported: 2022

Website: https://www.livingreefs.org/

Since launching in 2001, Waterstart has developed, and continues to expand upon, a collection of highly successful outdoor education programmes.  Waterstart promotes environmental awareness, and allows students to participate in woodland restoration, pilot aquaculture studies, seagrass monitoring and fish identification surveys. These programmes allow students to embrace new experiences and gain skills through experiential learning.

We support Waterstart due to the mixed educational and environmental benefits.

This supports our Foundation’s objectives of advancement of environmental protection or improvement and the advancement of education.

Year supported: 2022

Website: https://waterstartbermuda.org/

Tomorrow’s Voices was established in 2007 to provide low-cost behaviour therapy for children on the severe end of the autism spectrum. As the clinic continues to evolve, it has expanded its mission to assist all individuals with autism and developmental differences over their life span. Tomorrow’s Voices subsidises the cost of therapeutic one-on-one Applied Behavioural Analysis services to the parents and guardians of their clients by an estimate 80%. This gives those parents and guardians the ability to access high end, research based, medically necessary services at an affordable cost to ensure their children access the clinical services they need.  They also offer seminars for parents, teachers and other therapists.

This supports our Foundation’s objectives of advancement of health or saving of lives and relief to those in need.

Year supported: 2022

Website: https://www.tomorrowsvoices.bm/

On receipt of the funds, Stacy Hill, funding and development officer at autism charity Tomorrow’s Voices, thanked Conduit Re saying:

"The donation will assist in accomplishing our goal to provide hands-on one-on-one therapy to children affected by autism spectrum disorders and other developmental disabilities. For every $10 that is donated, we can provide 30 minutes of therapy to our clients. Thank you for supporting our mission."

Stacy Hill Funding and Development Officer at Tomorrow’s Voices

HOME works to end homelessness in Bermuda.  HOME is working with the Bermuda government, non-governmental agencies, charities, philanthropies, the religious and wider local community to create a collaborative, single plan to eradicate homelessness on our island.

Our donation will assist HOME to invest in one identified rough sleeper to enable them to go through their programme.

This supports our Foundation’s objectives of the prevention or relief of poverty.

Year supported: 2022

Website: https://home.bm/

Throughout the pandemic Conduit supported the provision of antigen tests to Bermuda’s public schools to support the community by enabling children to remain in school.

This supports our Foundation’s objectives of the advancement of health or saving of lives and the advancement of education.

Year supported: 2021, 2022

Paget Marsh is one of Bermuda’s most important nature reserves. The least disturbed of Bermuda’s original peat marshes, this 25-acre reserve is of great environmental significance, a valuable educational site, and a popular place for visitors and locals to enjoy some time in nature.

The Bermuda National Trust sought funding to restore the boardwalk at Paget Marsh, which is now 25 years old. It has been closed to visitors for the past three years as it needs substantial repair. The 400-foot wooden boardwalk allows access into the heart of the marsh, a special habitat virtually unchanged from pre-settlement times that most people would otherwise never get to experience. Interpretive signage provides for learning about Bermuda’s natural heritage. With a wheelchair-accessible entrance gate, the boardwalk provides virtually the only wheelchair friendly access to a nature reserve in Bermuda. Without the boardwalk, public access to this nature reserve is very limited. The reserve was an important part of Trust’s environmental education programme, but without the boardwalk they cannot hold fieldtrips there. The boardwalk is also essential for maintenance, as it provides access for volunteer work parties and contractors to remove invasive species deep within the marsh.

Given the educational and environmental benefit of this project, the Conduit Foundation committed to being a Platinum sponsor of the marsh.

This supports our Foundation’s objectives of the advancement of environmental protection or improvement and the advancement of education.

Year supported: 2022, 2023

Website: https://bnt.bm/environment/protected_open_space/central_wetlands/

Meals on Wheels Bermuda began serving the elderly and people with disabilities in 1975.  Meals on Wheels prepares and delivers freshly cooked meals, island-wide, to persons who are incapacitated or otherwise unable to prepare a nourishing meal on their own and who have no caregiver, friend or family member who can consistently provide this service. With the help of 120 volunteers and 4 part time staff, they cook and deliver approximately 3,800 nourishing individual meals per month while catering to multiple individual dietary requirements. Further, they provide meals in bulk to other local feeding programs.

Meals on Wheels are looking to purchase new heated food service delivery bags for the volunteers to use during their delivery routes. At present Meals on Wheels have tested several options that have not yet proved to meet their needs. Once Meals on Wheels have found a suitable bag, Conduit have committed to supplying a donation to purchase enough bags for each of their delivery routes. We have also committee staffing a weekly delivery route.

This supports our Foundation’s objectives of the prevention or relief of poverty and relief to those in need.

Year supported: 2023

Website: https://mealsonwheels.bm/