The Belize Red Cross Society Officially Opens New Building
The Belize Red Cross Society boasts a new building for its headquarters. The two-storey concrete structure is located two houses away from its original office building at number one Gabourel Lane in Belize City. While acquiring a much-needed building was a protracted exercise, the organization hopes to rent out parts of its real estate to sustain itself. Today, an official opening ceremony was held at the location on Handyside Street, and on this momentous occasion, the Red Cross did not forget one of its departed soldiers who gave selflessly even in her senior years. News Five’s Marion Ali reports.
Marion Ali, Reporting
The Belize Red Cross Society reached another milestone in its historical existence in Belize, with the opening of a new headquarters in Belize City. Notably, the new location is literally a stone’s throw from the old building on Gabourel Lane, that served in that same capacity for decades before. Today, Red Cross Director-General, Lily Bowman, admitted that the discussions to separate the functions of the Red Cross headquarters from the Belize City branch began as far back as 2007.
Lily Bowman
Lily Bowman, Director-General, Belize Red Cross Society
“We didn’t have a branch, we only had the headquarters, so we discussed about separating the functions. And we were thinking of taking the headquarters to Belmopan, where the government sits, the diplomatic corps sits, and a lot of our other partners. However, all our attempts to acquire land were futile for different reasons, and so we started scrapping that idea. And so we looked at let’s renovate the building, talking about the building that we were in before. I think we waited too long in actually raising the funds because we tried all along, we tried, but there were pauses in between. I mean, when we had to respond to a disaster, we had to drop all our efforts for fundraising.”
Prime Minister John Briceño was in attendance at the ceremony. He said the Red Cross has served Belize well.
Prime Minister John Briceño
Prime Minister John Briceño
“Whenever we think about hurricanes, the first thing that comes to mind is the Belize Red Cross Society. And they have such a great reputation that even the International Associations and the IFI’s would rather work through the Belize Red Cross Society, which speaks well for the work that they have done.”
Bowman said the building that housed the old headquarters eventually became unsafe for them to occupy and attempts to identify a piece of land in Belize City were futile, so the only option was to purchase a building. That’s where they got lucky with this one just two lots away. It will come in handy for quite a few purposes.
Lily Bowman
“We realized this building was up for sale. It was a call center first. So we decided to pursue it, and we were successful, of course, through the sponsorship of several generous donors, and here we are today. It’s going to be used as, our main headquarters, we have the main functions here, management, we have the disaster risk reduction area, the health area and the social assistance area. What it won’t be used for is distributing, like in times of disaster, distributing relief. This building will save us some money. All our trainings, all our workshops, meetings, we’ve been having to rent venues. So luckily now we have that nice space upstairs that will be saving us some money.”
And while it will save money, the Red Cross also hopes to earn revenue from the building, by renting out some of its space for meetings and workshops. Fittingly, they decided to honour one of its late founding members, Audrey Courtenay, by attaching her name to the conference room.
Audrey Courtenay
Lily Bowman
“Ms Audrey Courtenay to me, gave most of her life to this organization. The Belize Red Cross was, her thing, her, Belize Red Cross and her name were synonymous. So I think it’s most fitting. She did quite a lot for the country of Belize through the Belize Red Cross.”
Prime Minister John Briceño
“She served them for many, many years and I was just told by her daughter-in-law that even after she retired, she was still traveling around the country checking the different headquarter offices that they had around the country.”
The society hopes to get phase two of its building project underway shortly – that is, the renovation of its headquarters. That building will be used as a depot for Red Cross services, and will provide additional training and storage space. Marion Ali for News Five.
