4-Spice Restaurant's Soma Fund set for final push

When Ucluelet local Shamie Adeken met six-year-old Soma Prittipaul during a philanthropic trip to Guyana last year, she vowed to do whatever she could to support the young girl who is living with a severe heart condition.

When she returned home to Ucluelet, she found a community ready to help shoulder the load.

Adeken has turned her 4-Spice Restaurant on Peninsula Road into a fundraising vessel to support Soma, whose heart condition requires expensive treatment that she and her family must travel out of town to receive.

Soma’s next hospital stay is scheduled for Feb. 26 to April 2 next year and Adeken hopes to cover the bill by raising $2,500.

“That will make a comfortable stay for them and pay for the treatment,” she told the Westerly last week.

The Westerly reported on Adeken’s efforts to help Soma earlier this month and, since then, Adeken has put all donations into a large water jug. While she has not yet tallied the jug’s bounty, she has been overwhelmed by the community’s support.

“I am much more than happy, I’m excited. I don’t have words to describe how I feel,” she said. “I want to say thank you to Ucluelet for your generous, generous, support.”

Adeken’s $2,500 goal took a significant leap towards reality recently when Ucluelet’s Andrea Murray presented Adeken with a $1,000 cheque to Soma’s cause

“I want to thank Andrea and her family, I really do appreciate it,” Adeken said. “God bless them.”

Adeken said her fundraising efforts are not always focused overseas, but are predominantly pointed in the direction of children.

“This fundraising that I’m doing is not just for South America or for my country or for kids far away from here,” she said. “Our fundraising starts here at home.”

During her time in Ucluelet, she has been a consistent supporter and sponsor of Missing Kids Magazine.

“We’ve sponsored this for the past five years and we want to bring home all those kids that have gone missing and have been taken away,” she said.

 She said Ucluelet has been a consistent source of support for her fundraising efforts.

“It’s meant the world to me because kids are our future and we need to support them and we need to make sure they’re okay,” she said. “We start one at a time and just take care of one of them and then move on, just step by step one at a time and we go from there.”

Adeken will be temporarily closing up shop at 4-Spice next week but before she closes the doors she will make one final push for Soma support and every penny spent at 4-Spice this weekend—Friday, Saturday and Sunday—will be put in Soma’s fund.

“Whatever business that comes in is all going towards this...100 per cent of it,” she said.

reporter@westerlynews.ca