PHILIPSBURG, Sint Maarten — St. Maarten based Non-profit Organizations (NPOs) are set to benefit from the second round of capacity strengthening workshops organized by NPOwer, a program of Foresee Foundation. The new round of workshops will be held in October and November.
After a successful first round earlier this year, the feedback was clear: the workshops help NPOs to strengthen their capacity and become better in what they do: support the local community. Helping local organizations to be stronger in return helps the island.
The first two-hour workshop will be held on Monday, October 17 and will focus on remaining Tax Compliance pursuant to St. Maarten’s legislation at A.Th. Illidge Road # 60 (Former WIB bank). During this session, Baker Tilly will explain the basics of the TOT, wage tax and profit tax, with an emphasis on the tax exemptions and tips and suggestions will be provided about the handling of incorrect assessments from the tax office. In the group-setting participants will walk-through the monthly tax return form (TOT and wage tax).
In this new round of workshops, NPOs can expect to get capacity building workshops on ‘Community and Stakeholder Engagement’ by Charonne Holder, ‘Facebook’ by Breanna Barrie and Analeighni Wout, ‘Tax Compliance’ by Maarten Tervoort, ‘Introduction into Accounting’ by Kess Lusia, ‘Google Forms’ by Sergio Blomont, ‘Canva’ by Bart van der Meijden, ‘SMART Objectives’ by Margot Mesnard, ‘Crisis Communication’ by Saskia Jones, ‘Volunteer.sx’ by Rajesh Chintaman and Melanie Choisy and several other knowledge transfer sessions to be announced.
One of NPOwer’s goals is to ‘empower’ the non-profit sector on St Maarten. The project aims to bring together to share expertise, grow capacity, and assist with funding possibilities, fundraising, marketing, governance and other innovative strategies. An important asset of the project is the workshops, which help NPOs in their capacity strengthening, to share their expertise with each other and to support collaboration. Stronger NPOs means a more resilient sector on St Maarten.
The first round of workshops took place between March and May. The workshops were rated as ‘Excellent/Good’ with an average of 3.5 (from a 4-point scale). There is no doubt that participants valued the knowledge of the presenters and have used knowledge gained to the benefit of their respective organizations. With 172 unique local registrations, 47 organizations and 81 persons directly benefiting from the workshops, this definitely made a positive impact on the quality of service offered to the people of this island.
The workshops are financed by St. Maarten Development Fund (SMDF) and Samenwerkende Fondsen Cariben. Local foundations are urged to monitor their organization’s registered email accounts and NPOwer’s social media platforms to find more information and register.
NPOwer noted for the slogan “where NPOs connect” is located at Illidge Road #60, Unit 1 in the shared offices of R4CR and Samenwerkende Fondsen Cariben. For more information contact the NPOwer team at npowersxm@gmail.com or +17215815050 or visit their website at www.npowersxm.com.
