Plenty Bulletin

Articles:

Introduction
The Gulf: Two Years Later
Plenty Belize
Guatemala
Pine Ridge Agriculture
Kids To The Country, Summer ‘07

Plenty Belize
By Mark Miller

Ms. Adela Bolon of San Antonio Village is a good example of someone who has benefited from a microgrant. Ms Adela is a single mother of 6 children ranging in age from 5 to 17 years old. Through this program, Plenty Belize was able to provide her with a gas stove including tank, hoses, and regulator along with a large cooking pot and some baking pans. Ms Adela is now baking breads and cakes, and cooking tamales, rice’n’beans, etc. for sale in her village.

We at Plenty Belize have been busy this summer acting as a service provider to the European Union-funded Belize Rural Development Program. We’re administering a “Microgrants Program” for the rural poor, especially single mothers, in the Toledo District. To date we have given out more than 25 of these small grants (less than BZ$1,000 each) to help villagers start or improve their small businesses, such as seamstress shops, baked goods, firewood delivery, small machine mechanics, woodworking, crafts, etc. During the next two months, we will be conducting a series of trainings on business decision-making, basic bookkeeping, banking/credit, and marketing for 20 of the microgrant recipients. We will also continue to give out microgrants until we have utilized the full BZ$40,000 (US $20,000) that was made available.

High School started on Monday, August 27, and Plenty Belize was very happy to provide 4 students from the village of Conejo with books for their first year of high school, with one student also getting all fees paid for her first year. High School is not free, and less than half of eligible students attend high school in large part due to the expense. The students and parents of Conejo send their thanks to donor Jamie Bennett who has made a longterm commitment to assist the people of Conejo Village in partnership with Plenty Belize. Jamie has also provided funding for Plenty to install a solar-powered submersible water pump at the school in Conejo.

Primary school has now opened as of Tuesday, September 11, and our work with regular garden visits to 16 primary schools has begun in earnest. The first steps in a garden program every year include identifying the garden manager and garden team, meeting with the school staff and community members, taking inventory of tools and materials, identifying resources within the village, cleaning the garden site and identifying what grew through the summer.

Onaway Trust is sponsoring two of the more remote school gardens – in the Mayan villages of Pueblo Viejo and Crique Sarco . We introduced okra to the Crique Sarco school and village, and the villagers have taken a strong liking to it. Currently they have one task of okra growing (about 1/8th of an acre). They are requesting an additional two rolls of fencing to expand their garden.

Food for All is co-sponsoring 3 remote school gardens along with TOLCA – a local group of organizations including Plenty Belize that is dedicated to improving the lives of Toledo Children & Adolescents. These schools are just getting started with gardening this year, and we have had initial meetings with the villagers and school staff.

Students at Midway Village School started a pen-pal program with students in Sebastopol, California last year. That led Sebastopol teacher Anthony Stewart to contact Flow Fund Circle and request funding for equipping a feeding program kitchen to complement their successful school garden. The funding was granted and Plenty has been able to purchase a refrigerator, two tabletop stoves, a microwave oven, a pressure cooker, and a blender for the school kitchen. Funds remain to continue to purchase additional items needed to outfit the kitchen at Midway – a building constructed by the villagers through the leadership of the PTA and Principal, Augustine Lara.

We are very grateful to Onaway Trust, Food For All, Flow Fund Circle, Jamie Bennett, Christopher Gruener, and Isbell Ambiel, for their sponsorships. And a heartfelt thank you to all of you who donate to Plenty International and to Plenty Belize. The biggest part of our funding continues to come from you, and without you our work would not be possible!

For further information about sponsoring or co-sponsoring a school garden, please feel free to contact me at plentybz@btl.net.

A letter for Peace Corps Volunteer Mike McGuire in Belize: