Today, more than 130 students of Stella Maris Primary School took home a gift - hygiene kits, courtesy of the Lion's Club, Social Security, UNICEF, and the Belize City Council.

The project started with an idea from the Lion's Club, which then reached out to the other partners. As the treasurer explained, in the end they decided to go outside the box.

Sharry Castillo, Treasurer, Lion's Sub Umbra Floreo Club, Belize City
"The package itself hosts toiletries, we also have like underwear, socks, the hygiene products that they need. Toothbrush, toothpaste, it's basically a self care supply for each individual kid."

Courtney Menzies
"Why did you guys decide on hygiene packages?"

Sharry Castillo, Treasurer, Lion's Sub Umbra Floreo Club, Belize City
"To be honest the decision, we always given school bags and everybody has this back to school drive and it's a nice initiative, but we tend to look beyond just schoolbags, there are needs that kids maybe need that parents cannot provide and as a partnership and with groups and the lion we serve so we tend to look more beyond a school bag and we decided that the hygiene package would be more suited the kids of Stella Maris because with the disabilities they have, it's hard for teachers to look after everything for them so if we could send a package home to that parent as well to assist with them, that was a great initiative to came to our mind as well."

Sheree Selgado, Teacher, Stella Maris
"I believe Ms O'Brian told me that it was something it was something small they wanted to do and when they shared the idea, others, like UNICEF, they jumped on it, Social Security and they did it this way, their way, bigger, and of course we appreciate everything that we have gotten."

"Each student received a package today, each boy each girl, and we even have some overs so we can store for when they don't have that we have here for them."

Reporter
"How important is this support?"

Sheree Selgado, Teacher, Stella Maris
"Very important because we know where these students are coming from, we know the backgrounds of some of these students, we know the struggles of some of the parents so yeah, it's very important."

"We don't want it to stop here, we want others to jump on it and to continue to support our students."

And for two of the partners, CitCo and SSB, they said they jumped at the chance to assist the school.

Bernard Wagner, Mayor of Belize City
"This is a very special occasion for us to be able to participate in an activity like this, which really focuses on these kids here at Stella Maris and when asked to contribute to this event, we were compelled to do it and so it's a pleasure for us to be able to participate in such an activity."

"We try to spread as much as we can all across the city. We have so many schools in the city, Stella Maris is very special for us given the circumstances. We as a municipality try to spread our little resources we have all across the city and you can see that in the works we have been doing all across our city."

Vanessa Vellos, Communications & PR Manager, SSB
"The Lion's Club approached the Social Security Board to see if we would be interested in donating towards their causes and so Stella Maris, as you know, represents a school that caters to children who have special needs at times so we received the request and we decided to give them a cash donation of $500 and that was given from our SDA account and so that is our role in today's activities whereby we gave a cash donation plus we also gave a donation of crossbody bags and some water bottles so it was just to give something extra beyond what we already gave them."

And Castillo says the Lion's Club hopes to partner with other organizations to help them to give back to the community.