Harvest for Kids Tenth Anniversary

You may have heard of an initiative where local farmers dedicate a portion of their crops to raise funds for outreach programs aimed at children across Belize. Well now, Harvest for Kids is celebrating its tenth anniversary. The organization is the fundraising arm of the Belize Camping Experience. BCE was challenged to diversify its fundraising over the last two years, due to severe weather conditions and the COVID-19 pandemic. On the occasion of the anniversary, the community of Spanish Lookout donated forty-one acres on land for farming. We spoke to the director at BCE, Alexander Perez.

Alexander Perez

Alexander Perez, Director, Belize Camping Experience

“What I saw was a lot of hope and our people said, you know what, we got to do this. We got to continue reaching our kids through Belize Camping Experience. So, what I saw was a development over the last four months, just working towards it where the crops got covered a hundred percent, from the seed, from the machinery, from the fertilizer. Every detail you can tell, it was amazing to see, a hundredfold got covered in that field. This morning as I am following up, there is a group of four farmers in the committee, and those farmers are the ones, every other farmer comes under them, there were four carts of corn and they went to four different places to get dried. The people that dried them did not charge a single cent because it was for the kids. Guess what happened? Each one that dried, they bought the corn. And, it is gone, the corn is gone. So, I’m really looking forward to meet with them.”

Janellie Blanco

Janellie Blanco, Missionary, Belize Camping Experience

“There is still hope for our country; there is still hope for the children of Belize. Just this weekend we had a harvest in Spanish Lookout and that was amazing. We took about eight children from different parts of Belize City and everybody had an opportunity to be in one of the combines. We had about fourteen combines there and it was so amazing to see the kids be a part of that. Some of them have never been in those machines, and to see their faces and to explain to them that all of this happens because they are people in our country who believe that there is hope for our Belize.”