Facts About Our Work in Belize

Food For The Poor (FFTP) began working in Belize in 1986. The international relief and development organization helps local groups that serve in the Central American country. The local organization A Hand to the Needy has been an FFTP in-country partner for 35 years, and assists impoverished rural communities, providing help to more than 2,500 families within 61 communities and 44 schools throughout the country. In October 2020, FFTP added a new organization to its in-country partner list, the Roman Catholic Church of Belize, which received three tractor-tailer loads of aid to assist families in need.

The school feeding program in Belize is a primary focus. The local organizations, with the support of FFTP, are helping to provide meals to some of the country’s children in need.

In 2021, FFTP shipped 37 containers of essential goods, and nonperishable food to Belize including clothing, medical and orthopedic supplies, mattresses, and assorted canned food.

In March 2020, FFTP responded to the crisis when COVID-19, a respiratory disease caused by the coronavirus, became a pandemic. The charity shipped 10 tractor-trailer loads of food and personal hygiene items specifically for COVID-19 relief.

Belize is considered a Central American and Caribbean nation. It is the only country in Central America whose official language is English, though Belizean Creole, and Spanish also are spoken. Originally a part of the British Empire, from 1862 to 1973 the area went by the name of British Honduras. It became an independent Commonwealth in 1981 and has a population of approximately 405,633 people.

Belize has a small, mostly privatized enterprise economy based primarily on the export of petroleum and crude oil, agriculture, agro-based industry and merchandizing.

The GDP per capita is $6,100. Tourism and construction have recently assumed greater importance. More than 60 percent of Belize’s land surface is covered by forest, and more than 36 percent of that land falls under some form of official protected status, giving Belize one of the most extensive systems of terrestrial protected areas in the Americas.