The National Sports Council of Belize, recognized its gold sponsors today for the up and coming CODICADER U15, 2023 games being hosted in Belize. This year the Ministry of Sports reached out to the major utilities for donations, and managed to come up with a total of $150,000 to fund and host the tournament. Teams from Panama, Nicaragua and Honduras will be competing against Belize in a series of Basketball and Tennis games. The last CODICADER games were held in Honduras in 2019, where Belize won Gold in the Football tournament. Will Belize be able to defend its title this year? We spoke with the Minister of Sports today and here's what he said.
Rodwell Ferguson, Minister of Sports
"Well today is a very historic day where we partnered with our utility companies in Belize to contribute towards the CODICADER game. CODICADER is juvenile sports for central america and this year Belize is hosting basketball and table tennis. It's a budget of almost 300k and so we wondered where can we find this funds? So I am very agitated when I go to the cabinet and so I brought it to the cabinet and said PM that we need to fund these games coming up in August, and he suggest that we go and ask the utility companies. So the PM and myself visited them about two weeks ago and they were very delighted to say you know what we are going to support in whatever way we possibly can. So the initial contribution is 50k towards the CODICADER so that is already a 150k from the utility companies. and then the ministry of finance contribute the rest.So we are going to have the funds to make sure we have to provide for our young people from central america so we are very appreciative of that."
Cornelio Acosta, Chairman of Belize Water Services
"We had been approached by the Prime Minister and the Minister of sports to see how we could assist as a company , being a national utility, how could we assist in the development of national sports. There is a plan on how to improve and to support the youth so naturally we came onboard and we agreed that we would start initially with the Codicader games a 50 k investment then we would move onto other projects they will have countrywide. The total amount of sponsorship that we plan to do is 200k for the year."
The opening ceremony for the tournament will begin on August 2nd and close on August 6th.