Taiwan Donates 2 Vehicles to the Inspiration Center

Since its opening, the Inspiration Center has conducted a hundred and forty-four assessments of children with disabilities. The facility is currently actively seeing sixty-five children for speech and physical therapy and seventy-three children in other districts for community base rehabilitation. The Taiwanese Government has been one of the biggest supporters and donors of the Inspiration Center and today, as part of his visit to Belize, Taiwanese Foreign Minister officially handed over two wheelchair accessible vehicles to the Inspiration Center. News Five was on hand for the ceremony and Duane Moody along with intern, Frank Hower, put together this report.

Frank Hower, Reporting

Two vehicles were handed over to the Inspirational Center at mile one a half George Price Highway. The vehicles were handed over by the Taiwanese government. Executive director of The Inspiration Center Kendra Griffith explains:

Kendra Griffith

Kendra Griffith, Executive Director, The Inspiration Center

“These vehicles that were handed over today really contribute to the provision of our services because you would find that often the families of these children face severe financial constraints and these financial constraints don’t allow them many times to access the basic services that they need—healthcare services and even therapy services. So we are happy that we are able to provide therapy at a low cost—we only charge a ten dollar fee per session—and now that we are able to transport the clients here because we don’t have wheelchair accessible transportation here in Belize, especially public transportation. And so with these vehicles we are able to transport them to and from the center so that they can get the therapy that they need and we charge a subsidized free, three dollars roundtrip.”

Taiwanese Foreign Minister, David Lin, says that his government has contributed to the general welfare of the Belizean people. During the past few years, Taiwan has donated wheel chairs, computers and now a wheel chair accessible bus and van.

David Lin

David Lin, Taiwanese Foreign Minister

“I’m very happy to be here to witness the handing over of these two special vehicles. As I mentioned earlier, we are really supportive of this project to help the children, women here in Belize especially in cooperation with Misses Barrow. We feel that she is doing great things for this country and we are very happy to be her partners.”

According to Griffith, the center has been operational for the past eight months, providing services to persons living with disabilities. There is a minimal fee that is charged for the services offered, but the operational cost of the medical facility is provided primarily by donors like the Taiwanese government.

Kendra Griffith

“Donations is something that we are always looking for…we can never have enough because the fees that we charge for services can no way sustain us. And so we are very grateful to our donors and in particular Taiwan. Taiwan is our largest donor that we have aside from these vehicles, they contributed to the fundraising, to the telethon that we have. So anyone that wants to donate to us—funding, in-kind, they think that there is an equipment that we can use—please contact me at 222-5986 and we will accept any donation, big and small, because really every little bit contributes to our sustainability.”

Frank Hower reporting for News Five.

There are currently fifteen persons under the employ of the Inspiration Center.