Xaibe Village, Belize Relief Fund

While Covid-19 has been difficult for all Americans, it has been truly devastating for Xaibe Village, a small Mayan village in Belize.  The Covid-19 pandemic hit only months after Xaibe was the epicenter for a particularly bad outbreak of hemorrhagic dengue in 2019 which claimed the lives of several young people in the area.  Now, the village has been hit particularly hard both economically and with sickness from Covid-19 causing many deaths in the village.  Widespread malnourishment is now an urgent problem for virtually all of the 1500 villagers but especially the growing children of which there are many.

We are raising funds to buy meat, vegetables, baby food, baby formula, vitamins to distribute to needy families in the village.  If there is any extra money, it will be used to provide the farmers who need it, the funds to buy seed for their crops in the coming year.

The food will be purchased from local producers in the area since they desperately need the business.

The villagers of Xaibe work primarily in three industries: employment in a Freezone Belize has with Mexico across the border, tourism and growing sugarcane or vegetables for local consumption.  Upon the declaration of a pandemic in March, the nation of Belize completely closed its borders to the outside world.  This cut off the villagers from two of their sources of income: the Freezone and tourism.  While the country opened the airport in October, tourism is only a tiny fraction of its pre-Covid levels and the land border to the Freezone remains closed indefinitely.  The economic devastation caused by just trying to survive left many farmers with little or no ability to buy the seed or lease land now that the growing season has arrived.  The situation is dire.