Ford awards conservation grants

You may remember her from the eighties TV show Hart To Hart but actress Stephaine Powers has been busy travelling the globe in aid of the world?s natural resources specifically as a spokesperson for Ford Motor Company’s environmental protection programme. Each year Ford awards individual grants totalling ten thousand U.S dollars to groups or persons in more than forty countries around the world who are actively involved in the conservation of the environment. Tonight Powers along with Ford’s worldwide director for Environmental outreach and strategy, Andrew Acho, will be presenting a cheque to the Young Men’s Christian Association.

Stephanie Powers, Actress/Environmental Advocate

?In this day and age we have to really re-examine our our behaviour. We call ourselves the top of the food chain but that?s really a misnomer. We don?t contribute to anything. All we do is exploit. We as a species exploit. So it makes it even more important that if we are the absolute consumer and we are the absolute exploiter, then it behoves us to have more and take on more responsibility for the protection of all those things which are valuable that can perish in a minute just from us.?

Andrew Acho, Ford Motor Company

?Anyone in a particular country can apply for money to do good things for the environment and no one from Ford determines who gets our money. We have people from the country like for instance in Belize. It?s only people from Belize who determines who gets our money.?

Jacqueline Woods

?So how does one apply??

Andrew Acho, Ford Motor Company

?Oh, it?s very easy. We have an application. There is an annual event. We are having the event tonight to give away the money. But the process starts several months earlier so people can apply and there is an application form that they can get.?

Before coming to Belize Powers and Acho were handing out cheques to recipients in Guatemala, The Dominican Republic and Costa Rica. From Belize, they travel to Puerto Rico.