San Pedro ladies unveil special fundraising calendar

You might have seen a movie recently called Calendar Girls. It was the true story of an English woman who convinced her friends to pose in a calendar to raise money for her local hospital. In each photo was a sunflower symbolising the woman’s late husband. Well, here in Belize a group of local ladies from San Pedro have gotten together to create their own version, replacing the sunflower with a conch shell and a hibiscus. But one thing they haven’t changed is that, as portrayed in the movie, behind the various props all the women are completely nude. This afternoon two of the Belizean Calendar Girls stopped by our studios and they say they stripped so that the children of their community could have a better education programme. The criteria was simple, the calendar girls had to be at least fifty, full of energy, and have the right prop. We think they pulled it off.

Jan Brown, Miss May
?The gentleman in the middle of the picture here is named Pirate and he saw the movie ?Calendar Girls? and he said, who would be silly enough to do something like this and all thirteen of us said, we will. And then we got together and decided to do it for a good cause and we think that the educational futures of our children is the very best that we could possibly ask to do.?

Caroline Winsor, Miss December
?I said absolutely. I saw the movie, I loved it, I wanted to be in it, I wanted to be a part of it, and it?s been a really wonderful, wonderful project for us. And now we have a whole new group of women coming up next year, clamouring to be in the calendar for next year, so it?s been very exciting.?

Jan Brown
?Friends, husbands, co-workers and boyfriends have thought that it?s been a very good project. And if I may say, we hope that we?ve aged gracefully, that we have been able to do this very nicely. As you can see, they are very tastefully done. That?s myself, and this is Miss December, Caroline. And we have one lady that is seventy-eight years young. Miss Marie has been a very viable part of this and just giggles all the time.?

Caroline Winsor
?I look at myself all the time cause I had to lose weight for it, so I guess it motivated me that way. But I think it?s motivated me to get much more involved in community affairs and to be more helpful with people around us and I think it?s been a wonderful project for us.?

Jan Brown
?If you?ll see, there are advertisement all the way on the edge and these are the people who supported the cost of the publishing on this. We have a lot of very, very good supporters. These are island people that have taken this project on along with us. We have dedicated, with the sales of this we?re hoping to raise at least thirty-five thousand dollars for the total sales of the calendar for two thousand of them. We also have dedicated the first ten thousand dollars of this money to build classrooms in San Pedro. Hopefully they will get started over the Christmas holidays.?

?Out of our first order we?ve sold almost a thousand calendars and we?ve now come to the mainland because we have gotten calls over here for people wanted to find a source for them in Belize City. So now we have several sources over here for you.?

Copies of the Isla Bonita Calendar Girls calendar were published by BRC printing in Benque and can be bought at Old Belize, the Tourism Village, the Pirates Museum, or by contacting Jan Brown at the Pier Lounge in San Pedro at 226-2002. The calendars sell for twenty dollars each.