Sandals has always understood that one one coco full basket. Jamaican tourism is built on more than its place in the sun. It is built on her music, her culture, her food, her craft, her people, and the countless acts of care and investment that, taken together, tell the world who Jamaica truly is. At Jazz Fest 2026, Sandals showed up with a full basket.
Sandals has spent over four decades demonstrating that tourism must do more than fill hotel rooms. It must transform communities. Build lives. Preserve culture. And leave the islands better than it found them. To achieve this, the Sandals Foundation was created.
The Philanthropic Heart: Sandals Foundation
The Sandals Foundation works tirelessly to help Caribbean communities thrive by investing in sustainable projects in education, environment, and community aimed at improving people's lives and preserving our natural surroundings. Founded in 2009 as the formal philanthropic arm of Sandals Resorts International, it is, as Adam Stewart describes it, quite literally their love of home put into action.
Sandals Resorts proudly supports all administrative and management costs so that 100 percent of every dollar donated goes towards the funding of initiatives in education, community, and the environment. That single fact separates the Sandals Foundation from most corporate philanthropy.
And their work is extraordinary in its scope and diversity. The Foundation has established marine sanctuaries and coral restoration sites in Jamaica and Saint Lucia. It has planted over 25,000 trees across the Caribbean. It has provided free healthcare to thousands of locals. It has empowered over 4,000 women through various empowerment programs across the Caribbean. And its invitation to Pack for a Purpose has resulted in over 90,000 pounds of supplies donated to Caribbean schools.
Recognizing the importance of music to Jamaica, the Sandals Foundation has supported the Skyliner Marching Band, delivered specialized brass music education workshops with Sam Sharpe Teachers' College, and invested in the island's renowned Alpha School of Music, collectively nurturing the next generation of Caribbean musicians and preserving the region's rich musical heritage. Music is an integral part of Jamaica's identity. The Sandals Foundation's supportive presence at Jazz Fest 2026 was an investment in Jamaica.
But perhaps the Foundation's most culturally resonant initiative, and the one most directly connected to what unfolded at Jazz Fest 2026, is the Caribbean Artisan Collection Programme. Launched in Jamaica in 2018 with support from the Development Bank of Jamaica, the Government of Jamaica, and the World Bank, the programme brought product development, packaging, marketing, and key business skills to artisans across the region. Since its launch, year on year sales of products for artisans trained under the programme increased by 23 percent, and locally made crafts became one of the best selling items within resort shops. Today the programme has supported over 30 artisans across all nine islands where Sandals Resorts operates.
Through their crafts, artisans not only keep the culture of their communities alive but provide employment to an extended network of supply chain producers and distributors. As Heidi Clarke, Executive Director of the Sandals Foundation, put it: when we support artisans, we are not just preserving craft. We are protecting livelihood and strengthening communities. At Jazz Fest 2026, those words took physical form.
“When we support artisans, we are not just preserving craft. We are protecting livelihood and strengthening communities.” ~ Heidi Clarke
Music Was Always in Sandals' DNA
The Sandals story at Jazz Fest 2026 did not begin at the Fair Grounds. It began in Jamaica, in 1996, when Gordon "Butch" Stewart, as chairman of Air Jamaica, launched the Air Jamaica Jazz and Blues Festival at Rose Hall Great House in Montego Bay. That same year, the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival launched its Cultural Exchange Pavilion, celebrating the music and culture of Caribbean nations. Jamaica's artists graced the Jazz Fest stages for decades. Yet a dedicated spotlight on Jamaica as a nation had never come. Until 2026.
Butch Stewart understood instinctively that Jamaica and jazz share the same ancestral root, the same African memory, the same gift for turning suffering into beauty. He brought the world's greatest jazz and blues artists to Jamaica's shores, among them George Benson, Buddy Guy, Patti LaBelle, Al Jarreau, and Ziggy Marley. When others doubted that Jamaica could host a world class jazz festival, Butch Stewart was already building one.
From Butch to Adam, from one generation to the next, the Stewart family continues to keep Jamaica's story in the spotlight. At Jazz Fest 2026, with the Sandals Resorts Jamaica Cultural Exchange Pavilion flying Jamaica's flag at one of the world's greatest music festivals, that story found one of its most extraordinary stages, where Jamaica sits comfortably.
After Hurricane Melissa: Showing Up When It Mattered Most
In the aftermath of Hurricane Melissa, the Sandals Foundation acted decisively and expediently, knowing that restoring livelihood means restoring dignity. In rural districts, agriculture, fisheries, and other small enterprises comprise the backbone of Jamaica's everyday life. Preserving the cultural traditions that would otherwise be lost is as important as clearing roads and repairing buildings after a Category 5 storm that shakes the core.
For Jazz Fest artisans Omar "Sheldon" Daley and Lavern Evans, co-founders of FIRSTSTRAW Company, the Foundation's response was deeply restorative. "Even when there seems like there's no hope, hope comes along." The Sandals Foundation intervened, installing a solar energy system that allowed them to return to making a living. Jamaican resilience in action. That is heritage tourism at its most intentional, and its most human.
The Craft: Hands That Tell the Story
FIRSTSTRAW Company is a family enterprise rooted in the ancestral craft of straw weaving. Together Omar and Lavern represent Westmoreland's living craft tradition at the Cultural Exchange Artist Demonstration Tent. Omar learned the craft from his mother, a tradition rooted in the ancestral practices of Jamaica's Taíno and African heritage. He weaves bags, baskets, trays, and more, blending traditional techniques with contemporary design in pieces that are, as he put it himself, a reflection of who we are. Out of many, one people.
Dana Baugh, founder of BAUGHaus Design Studio, brings a different but equally rooted dimension of Jamaican craft to the world. Working in porcelain, she handcrafts tableware, planters, and sculptural pieces that capture the quiet beauty of everyday Jamaican life. Over a decade of refining a practice that merges functional design with cultural storytelling, Dana's work does not simply sit on a shelf. It asks to be held, used, and lived with. A plate. A planter. A breadfruit. A patty. Uniquely and distinctively Jamaica.
Out of Many. One Jamaica.
The Sandals experience at Jazz Fest 2026 unfolded across three distinct but complementary spaces, each designed to offer festivalgoers a different dimension of the Jamaica story.
The Sandals Resorts Jamaica Cultural Exchange Pavilion was the cultural heart: the performance stage, the Jonkonnu parade, and the sounds of every genre Jamaica has ever given the world. For two full weekends, it was the most Jamaican square footage on earth outside the island itself.
Out of many, one people.