The 13th an­naul Sco­tia­bank Trinidad and To­ba­go Foun­da­tion Against Breast Can­cer Golf Tour­na­ment will tee off on Fri­day at the St An­drew's Golf Club in Mo­ka, Mar­aval, from 9 am. The venue will be abuzz with ac­tiv­i­ty as 30 teams will vie for brag­ging rights but for a good cause. This ini­tia­tive forms part of the Foun­da­tion's thrust for the ear­ly de­tec­tion of breast can­cer and is a key fundrais­ing event for its free breast can­cer screen­ing clin­ics, held year­ly in Oc­to­ber. To date, over 16,000 women have had ac­cess to free breast can­cer screen­ing, ul­tra­sounds and mam­mo­grams at se­lect­ed health and med­ical in­sti­tu­tions through­out Trinidad and To­ba­go. Since its in­cep­tion in 2000, this char­i­ty golf tour­na­ment has shown a pro­gres­sive in­crease in par­tic­i­pa­tion. Ac­cord­ing to Hei­di Ba­son, Gen­er­al Man­ag­er of the Sco­tia­bank Trinidad and To­ba­go Foun­da­tion "Al­though this is tra­di­tion­al­ly an all women's event, this year, we con­tin­ue to in­clude men, a de­ci­sion tak­en for last year's tour­na­ment, be­cause we recog­nise that while breast can­cer is main­ly a fe­male is­sue, it af­fects en­tire fam­i­lies."

Sco­tia­bank ac­knowl­edges the con­sis­tent sup­port of its val­ued spon­sors, whose con­tri­bu­tions en­sure the con­tin­ued suc­cess of the event year af­ter year. This year, spon­sors in­clude At­lantic, Bea­con In­sur­ance, BG TT, CIC In­sur­ance Bro­kers, EOG Re­sources, Glob­al Fi­nance In­sur­ance Bro­kers, GTM In­sur­ance, Had­co, Haygem Tours & Trav­el Ser­vice, In­dus­tri­al Chem­i­cal Sup­plies, Janouras, John Dick­in­son, Kee Chanona, KP­MG, Megabrite In­dus­tries, Neal & Massy Hold­ings, Phoenix Park Gas Proces­sors, Pi­lot Mange­ment Ser­vices, Ren­tok­il Ini­tial, Sagi­cor, Scrip–J, Trid­i­um Caribbean, Trinre, TSTT, Unilever Caribbean, Valdez & Tor­ry In­ter­na­tion­al and Whan Tong Agen­cies. They will each be vy­ing for the cov­et­ed "Hole in One" prize of a home stand­by 10kW gen­er­a­tor, cour­tesy of an­oth­er spon­sor, In­no­v­a­tive Pow­er Sys­tems (IPS). Sco­tia­bank re­mains com­mit­ted to sup­port­ing the com­mu­ni­ties with­in which it op­er­ates. Year­ly, it in­vests heav­i­ly in the ar­eas of health­care, youth, ed­u­ca­tion, sports and cul­ture via the Sco­tia­bank Trinidad and To­ba­go Foun­da­tion, a sub­sidiary of the Bank that over­sees the phil­an­thropic work of the or­gan­i­sa­tion.