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After 40 years the Belize Red Cross opened the doors to its brand new headquarters this morning, which will serve as the country's center of operations, and double as the Belize District branch. The organization started raising funds in 2007 to purchase a new building, after their old one located on Gabourel Lane started falling apart. Not only will this sturdy new structure enable the organization to effectively continue their operations, but they will also have the space to facilitate trainings, recruit more members and expand their outreach to those in need.
Nigel Ebanks, President, Red Cross
"We have been working in Belize for more than a century now. We have been located at the old headquarters for at least 40 years. That building fell into disrepair to the point where i t was uninsurable. It posed safety risks, so in or around 2007 an initiative started to raise funds for the refurbishment of that building initially or for the acquisition of property to build."
"This building would serve as the headquarters on a day to day basis. It's where we have our administration and our core staff. The Director General, the finance office, the line staff who deals with for instance first aid training, training in home caregivers courses and the other programs that we would run from here like the work that we would do in the community this would really be our center of operations.During times of disaster this would be the emergency operating center."
Lily Bowman, Red Cross, Director General
"We have the Disaster Risk Reduction area, the health area and the social assistance area. What it won't be used for is to distribute like in times of disaster, distributing relief we won't be doing it from here. We hope that we can get our phase two of this project which will be renovating the next building now,and that will be like a depot for all our services. And more training space, storage space, and some income generation for the National Society."
John Briceno, Prime Minister
"The Belize Red Cross society has been serving Belize very well. And whenever we think about hurricanes the first thing that comes to mind is the Belize Red Cross society."
"And today we are inaugurating their new headquarters. And I am so pleased that they have the training center named after the late Audrey Courtenay."
"So I'm very excited. I'm very happy that everybody joined together with the Belize Red Cross society to be able to make this a reality."
Nigel Ebanks, President, Red Cross
"Approximately we spent about just under 500k to acquire the property as it was. It needed to be refurbished, the refurbishment took us to over 600k"
The funding of the new red cross headquarters located on Handyside street,was made possible with the help of donations from. donations from GOB, the Waterloo Charitable trust, Fortis, BEL and many other private partners.
