Moses Sulph delivers the goods and services to students

Summer vacation is officially over as schools reopened across the country today. On the south side of Belize City, about three hundred needy students from eleven schools have the stationery they need thanks to a new charity foundation called Hand of Mercy. You’ll recognize its Executive Director, the outspoken former President of COLA, Moses Sulph, who started soliciting donations for the initiative in April. On Friday, Sulph and other members of the charity handed out books, school bags and other necessities to both primary and secondary school students who lined up at the St. Martin de Porres compound. Sulph says he worked with the teachers of the different schools to get the names of those who were most in need, but he expects to reach more students and provide greater assistance in the coming years.

Moses Sulph, Executive Director, Hand of Mercy Charity Foundation

Moses Sulph

“We’ve realized that there’s a need for assistance in the community so this charity is dedicated towards helping marginalized kids with school supplies. This is our first year we are starting. Initially we had just planned and promised to give a dozen exercise books to each child, pens and pencils; however, we were able to give some crayons, some school bags, different rulers, sharpeners, erasers and so on with the assistance of some sponsors. I really would like to thank some of the sponsors such as Smart, such as ICB, such as Mr. Usher, Ms. Sams, Ms. Authors from the US—these are people who sent in stuff. We assisted about three hundred kids here today. By next year we’re hoping that we will be able to give everyone school bags and all the other school supplies that we can give. So we’re asking that you would like to be a donor to the charity, you can contact us and see how you can assist us next year because we want to make it a year round thing whereby kids who are marginalized can come in and do their homework and get supplies that they need and stuff like that. So we want to make it a full year thing. 00:02:35 We’re very happy today that we were able as a community to help about three hundred kids and still there are some that say they need assistance so we’re going to see how we can help those after today. The charity is also designated in the near future to provide lunch for students, to provide school uniforms for the marginalized students again and also do tutoring and provide them with internet access where they can do their research. So those are some of our plans.”

Hand of Mercy Charity Foundation is now working on getting registered as an NGO and opening an office. To support this new charity, you can contact Sulph at 631-6286.