Local Youth Organization feeds the homeless

Belize City Mayor Darrell Bradley announced while unveiling his hundred day plan on Wednesday that the council is working with the Kolbe Foundation to find a way to house the homeless persons from Belize City. Before that happens, however, for the past several days, the homeless in the downtown area have been treated to hot meals by group of city youths. You may not be familiar with the Youths Creating Talent organization, but their Easter project is a first step to change that. The group was founded in 2009 by Justin Gill and now has twenty-nine youth members. They volunteered over the holiday weekend to provide three meals a day to homeless persons, particularly those in the Battlefield Park. Gill told News Five on Wednesday that had great support to make the initiative a success.

Justin Gill, Youth Coordinator/Facilitator, Youths Creating Talent

“We have decided to assist sixty homeless of Belize City for Easter by giving them a full fresh meal; breakfast, lunch and supper as well as refreshing drinks, coffee etcetera.”

Delahnie Bain

Justin Gill

“And you all did this throughout the Easter holiday?”

Justin Gill

“Throughout the Easter holiday; the last of it will be tomorrow.”

Delahnie Bain

“Okay, you guys are a relatively young organization; how did you manage to get the support to carry out this activity?”

Justin Gill

“We, to carry out our project it took a lot of work. We had started to prepare for this project from February and I have to send my sincere gratitude to the people of Garden City as well as all those within the city limits that supported and contributed to our project; to our main sponsors Smart and Belize Water Services and I would also like to thank the people of the Caye and San Pedro for giving their support to this project.”

Delahnie Bain

“Can you tell us a bit about how you all came up with the idea?”

Justin Gill

“Well, from 2009 we opened the organization and we did the project in 2009. We decided to do it again because we’re a very young organization and we want to get out in the field to get more known and we thought that this Easter project would the first project for us to get out there in terms of showing the people what some of the youths of Belize City are trying to do. Today was a real hectic day because we went to the Battlefield Park and from there we had some food left and we had to walk to find those sleeping on Queen Street by the police station etcetera.”

The initiative is planned to continue annually. Youths Creating Talent is now in the planning phase of a “Runway Project” that will include several activities.