Affordable Food for Belmopan’ Needy

Amidst all the bloodshed that has dominated the news over the past few days, there is a bit of good news to share tonight. In Belmopan, the city council has started a new initiative to help feed its most disadvantaged families healthy food at a nominal cost. The food bank, as Mayor Sheran Palacio calls it, involves donations from businesspeople.  The Belmopan City Council which will act as the distribution point will receive and package the perishable items in five pound bags. Mayor Palacio told News Five that for the Christmas holidays, they decided to distribute the food items free of cost to more than eighty families in that municipality.

Sheran Palacio

Sheran Palacio, Mayor, Belmopan

“I must give a lot of thanks to my daughter, Mystery Furtado, who from the time she returned from Canada she kept telling me, “Mommy, you need to have a food bank, ma,” cause she would see people constantly come to our house asking for support. I reached out to the private sector, some real supportive businessmen right here in the City of Belmopan and they’ve been so kind and we’ve already agreed that monthly I’ll be getting support, but there’s a catch: the beneficiaries won’t be receiving these wonderful foods for free. Twice a month they will come into the office, they’ll pay twenty dollars Belize and that twenty dollars will give them access to rice, flour, everything you see down there – beans, oil, baking powder. And we will be working with them for them to not depend on food bank for the rest of their lives.”