Ride Across Belize raises 66,383 for Gift of Life Program

The Social Security Board’s Ride Across Belize had a record breaking year. Today they handed over a cheque for sixty-six thousand three hundred and eighty-three dollars to the recipient, the Rotary Club’s Gift of Life Program. The theme this year was “Every mile can save a child. Ride for a cause. Ride for health. Give the Gift of Life” and as Yvette Burkes tells us, the generous donation will indeed save many lives. Burks is the Chair of the Rotary’s Gift of Life and she is soon to assume presidency of the program. We got her reaction at the handing over ceremony.

Yvette Burks, Chair, Rotary’s Gift of Life Program

“[I’m] ecstatic! It makes my year of presidency easier but more important it ensures that we will be able to continue to give the gift of life to Belizean population for quite a while to come.”

Delahnie Bain

yvette burks

“How will this donation assist with Gift of Life for the next year or however long it will last?”

Yvette Burks

“As you know we send up to fourteen fifteen children a year. This year we had thirteen children who benefited from the program. We actually would have had a fourteenth one, unfortunately the little darling didn’t make it long enough to leave. But we also have the clinics twice a year and it’s important that the public knows the next clinic is the seventeenth and eighteenth of August by the way. These are all very expensive ventures so we need a lot of funding and fundraising will continue to be a part of what we do. And this is a onetime shot from Ride Across Belize that ensure that even if things get really bad next year, we should have a little bit in the kitty that ensures that any child unfortunate enough to need an open heart surgery in the next year or two will be able to do it because this year we had a little windfall.”

merlene martinez

Merlene Bailey-Martinez, CEO, Social Security Board

“When you invest in your children, it’s never—it’s always a good investment. It’s always an excellent investment, it prioritizes where we are as a country. And we’re very happy to partner with something like that and certainly it has been our pleasure.”

Dr. Ramon Figueroa, Coordinator, Ride Across Belize

“I have to say that this year has been a first; a first I think in terms of the amount of funds we raised, a first in terms of the involvement of the staff because really this year we had significant staff involvement. It was an excellent learning experience for us and also a first in how quick we handed over the funds because was a couple of months afterwards that we had been able to manage that. I think we’re getting better at it as the years go by.”

The riders pedaled from Corozal to Punta over four days on May twenty-seventh to thirtieth.