IDB donates to Maya music project

The Interamerican Development Bank is taking an increasingly high profile in Belize as it moves beyond its traditional role as financier of big infrastructural projects. While the IDB has been the major player in Belize’s multi-million dollar hurricane rehabilitation programme, it took time today to announce the awarding of a far smaller grant in the artistic field. Ten thousand dollars has been awarded to the Toledo Maya Cultural Council to support an initiative to revive traditional Maya music in the south. The funds were allocated under IDB’s Cultural Promotion in the Field Programme and will be used to train over a dozen Mayan youths in the playing of harp and marimba. The TMCC is the third organisation to receive funding under the programme. Past recipients have been the Belize National Museum Project and the Ambergris Caye Museum and Cultural Centre.