Ford, Jaguar make environmental grants

Four local organisations have received grants from automobile manufacturers for environmental and cultural conservation projects. According to a release issued today, the winners of the Ford Motor Company Conservation and Environmental Grant Awards Program are the West Landivar Citizens Action Committee, which will receive eleven thousand dollars for their project: Dolphin Park, Green Spaces in Urban Places. In the culture category, teachers and students from Mount Carmel High School will put their four thousand dollars towards Marimba Music Conservation. The projects were selected by a panel of judges including Aldo Cansino, Oscar Alonzo and Rene Villanueva. This is the fifth year Ford has funded such projects in Belize. That’s the same amount of time that Jaguar North America has been supporting non-profit groups in Belize to preserve that endangered species and its habitat. This year’s award recipients are the Belize Zoo which will be partnering with the Scout Association in a fifteen thousand dollar project to “promote Jaguar Conservation and Awareness”. Meanwhile, the Itzamna Society will use their fifteen thousand dollars to conduct a monitoring census for the jaguar population in the Eligio Panti National Park. In its release, the luxury carmaker says the idea is to bolster Belizean efforts to preserve, protect and propagate the Jaguar in the wild and in captivity through research, education and management.