Local News

Youth for the Future, the Orange Walk Town Council and Peace Corps Belize have teamed up to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of Peace Corps in Belize. Kristen Eure Peace Corps volunteer tells us more.

KRISTEN EURE, Volunteer

“It will be at Fort Cairns Plaza which is right behind the market next to Town Hall.  It will start at 5:30 and it will go until 10:00 ending with fireworks display.  Fifty years ago the Government of Belize invited Peace Corp to come here and Peace Corp first goal is to work with locals on projects that are important to the community so they invite us here to assist them with training teachers or health professionals or even working with youth on youth projects.  Throughout the whole country we have all different kind of projects.  Whatever it is that Belizeans locals really want form their community we come here to assist in training people on how to do those programs.  We’ve been here for fifty years and we’ve had over 1600 volunteers throughout the history of Belize.    

The event is being held under the theme, Peace and Friendship: Uniting two Countries for fifty years.

KRISTEN EURE, Volunteer

“The reason we are doing this celebration tomorrow is 4^th July, it is a U.S. holiday and some of our other goals are to share American culture with Belizeans and share Belizean culture with Americans. So we come here and spend two years as volunteers learning about Belizean culture, eating the food, dancing the dances and celebrating weddings and baptism and graduations and we go back to the U.S. and share with Americans what Belizeans are like, what the culture is like and this is an opportunity to also share with Belizeans our U.S. culture which 4^th July is one of the biggest holidays in the U.S. celebrating the U.S. independence day.”

The event takes place tomorrow evening starting at five thirty at the Fort Cairns Plaza in Orange Walk town  

KRISTEN EURE, Volunteer

“We have vendors who are selling arts and crafts.  We have food vendors, if you’re a food vendor in Orange Walk please bring your garnaches, your hot dogs, your tacos, please bring out that so we can share that with everybody in attendance.  The talent show put on by Youth of the Future is going to be fantastic.  They’ve got singing and dancing, poetry, drama.”

The talent show and fireworks celebration will end at ten in the night. Dalila Ical, for Love News.