Unity Presbyterian Primary School Receives $20,000 for Fence

Today, the Unity Presbyterian Primary School on Antelope Street Extension received a handsome donation from Rotary Club Fifty-Two, Eighty of California. The money will be used to complete a fence around the school’s campus. The donation came through the Rotary Club of Belize. News Five was at the school today and spoke with Francis “Cisco” Woods and Principal of the school, Dalila Makhwani to find out how this donation was made possible and in what ways it will benefit the school.

Francis “Cisco” Woods

Francis “Cisco” Woods, Rotarian

“We are at the culmination of a humanitarian trip from district fifty-two eighty in California, Northern California. And, uh, we just wrapped up with the last project that we did, which was a twenty thousand dollar donation to Unity Presbyterian for their fence project that they’re doing. But the entire project is fifteen projects that we did, and two of them were global grants. So they’re large numbers, but the sum of everything is four hundred and thirty thousand dollars that this group brought to the country in over fifteen projects, fifteen projects to be exact.”

Marion Ali

“How do you coordinate with these international Rotarian rotary groups?”

Francis Woods

“They reached out to us, District fifty-two eighty. Every year they go to a country, they select a country. They asked the Rotarians, the Rotary clubs from that country to submit projects that they would like to see get help with, and so they did the same. Belize. We submitted every club in the country, submitted projects that they’re working on, and they had to select something that would fit their budget. They ended up selecting fifteen projects. We managed to do projects in Orange Walk, Belmopan, San Ignacio, Punta Gorda, all the way in Crique Sarco, several projects in Belize City and yeah, I think that that covered everything.”

Dalila Makhwani

Dalila Makhwani, Principal, Unity Presbyterian Primary School

“We are in dire need of this fence because then we can have a place that is safer, we can have a place that where we are going to integrate science, we can bring science, we can have our gardens. We always wanted to have our gardens. We will have less of vandalism in the school and we would also be able to, to beautify the place, so it would be a safe and child-friendly environment whereby they would also be using their environment to learn.”