"I am Belize" - that's the feel-good anthem for the project called RESTORE Belize - but two months after the project was launched, many have been asking if there is more than just a song.
Turns out, there is. Project organizers have been working steadily on the first Community Safe Zone. It's that area bounded by Central American Boulevard to the west, Caesar ridge road to the east, Neal's Pen Road in the north and Faber's Road in the south.
After meeting with community resource persons in august, the Restore Belize group held its first open community meeting on Sunday august 29th.
Today, Coordinator Mary Vasquez told us more what the term community safe zone means for those actually living in the area.
Mary Vasquez, Coordinator
"The first community safe zone; we will be looking at a variety of different interventions. We'll have security interventions that would address specifically the criminal activity in the area and the safety of people in the area but it would also - to me more interestingly - provide for assistance to the families in the area and assistance to the area overall in terms of infrastructure; in terms of keeping children in school; in terms of after-school programs. In terms of assistance to the families individually, we would be helping families to access the social assistance programs, specifically the conditional cash transfer program is coming on stream shortly. And because we are doing a house to house survey right now, through that we would be able to identify the families that are eligible for that program and make them access that assistance. We will have enough information by mid September to plan more in depth and individualize assistance to the families, so by the end of September we would be able to start rolling out specific assistance to individual families meanwhile we are already working with the schools on the improvements that they have requested, and we are already looking at providing assistance to keep children in school."
The community clean up work has begun led by the ministry of works and the CYDP.
That includes the clearing of drains, cutting in public areas, cleaning up of abandoned lots and homes, and painting of St. John Vianney, and Excelsior class rooms.
A house-to-house survey of the 350 to four hundred homes in the area started this week to get an individual profile and individual needs of each family.
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