Food for San Pedro a Success!
There is another initiative, a fundraising drive, which has been started by attorney Audrey Matura to assist those whose lives have been devastated by a second lockdown. Residents, many who have been left destitute, are in need of food items to survive as they have lost their source of income and have not received assistance from any of the government relief programmes. Matura has committed, at least for the next few weeks of the lockdown, to supply food packages to some three hundred families. Late last week, deliveries were made to one hundred and fifty-seven families with the help of private donors. Those donations were matched by Matura’s law firm and the food items bought and transferred to San Pedro where a team on the ground on Ambergris Caye bagged the items.
Audrey Matura
Audrey Matura, Organizer, Food for San Pedro
“It started small. Last week, we sent our first shipment. We had gotten a donation of a total of one thousand two hundred and fifty dollars—that’s from people giving us twenty dollars, fifty dollars, a hundred dollars, two hundred dollars is the most we got. Then I matched that from my sources here at the office. With that we were able to buy enough stuff to feed two hundred families. The packages that we prepared were a hundred and fifty-seven families got. But apart from that, we took some of the stuff and sent it to the Roman Catholic Church, Saint Teresita Casita that does the Seed for Life Programme; we thought if we give them a little bulk donation to help with their programme, it would help too. This week, I must say it has been good. We have been really good at promoting so this week already we have at least three hundred dollars and the biggest so far of a thousand dollars is then gonna put us a bit ahead. So I have to match that now. I guess it will reach a point that I can’t match it where I get huge donation, but it doesn’t matter because it is a seed that was planted, we are starting. And I really hope more people do it because they have to remember this: we are non-political; we are working with people who live there, are on the ground, they have no axe to grind with anyone. They have gone to the most depressed areas. When we reach out to the families, all we want from them is there contact information so that if we need to go back and take more for them, we know who they are already. When we do this and help those families we are helping, we are really helping those who are far more desperate.”
