We at CalvinAyre.com are big believers in giving back to the community and we follow in the footsteps of our Founder, Calvin Ayre of the Calvin Ayre Foundation.  Hurricane Irma tore through Barbuda last week and as a long-time resident of Antigua & Barbuda, Calvin’s Foundation will be matching all donations towards Barbuda’s hurricane relief effort up to $1 million.  Calvin Ayre himself will also be making a separate donation.

Unfortunately, there are so many people in this world who need relief from natural disasters and a life of poverty in general.  Throughout my time in the gambling industry I’ve witnessed so much generosity from my peers in the form of donations, corporate social responsibly programs, charity work and more.  Friend and former iGaming industry professional Julia Wild has taken generosity one step further by deciding to dedicate herself full-time to a charity that is close to her heart, From Houses to Homes (FHTH). 

“Three years ago we moved to Guatemala and some friends had planned a trip around the same time to build a house for an incredibly poor local family. We started doing some fundraisers and raised the money to cover the cost of the house.  As a family, including our four and six year old children, we spent a week building a house for a family that had been living in a shack, a single Mom with eight children. They didn’t have their own rooms with toys overflowing out of their toy chest; they had no video games or a television. Still, they were smiling. They helped us build, they made us laugh and the simplest act of kindness that we gave them brought them such happiness”, shared Wild.

“After a week of building we handed a set of keys over to a Mom who just stood there and cried. She had never had a set of keys before. She cried happy tears (and so did we). It was the first time that we had ever really seen what poverty was”, Wild added.