Welcome to Full Basket Belize

2024-25 Scholarship Update

Each year Full Basket Belize searches for the best and brightest high school students in Belize to be the recipients of our annual scholarships.    We have now completed our search and selected 45 students to receive our scholarships for US$500/BZ$1,000 to pay for their tuition, fees, books, and uniforms.  We are in the process of notifying the students and their schools and will announce the winners once all the necessary paperwork is completed.  We will publicly announce the winners in late June.

Meet FBB Scholar Karina Martinez

Karina is 15 and currently in the third form at Independence High School (IHS).  She lives with her family in San Ramon Village in the Stann Creek District of Belize.  Her parents are both struggling with health issues, limiting their ability to work and causing significant financial strain on the family.  Karina is thus responsible for most household chores that need to be done.

Karina has been the student body president of IHS for the past two years.  She was elected to this position when she was in her first year of high school, the first time that happened.  She is a born leader.  As president, she works hard to enhance her school environment.  She is involved in the SEA program which enables students to travel, explore new places, and participate in cleaning initiatives during their trips.  She is also working with the HUMANA program that focuses on building greenhouses and plantings.

To earn money for her school lunches and projects supplies, Karina sells homemade choco bananas, ideals, and sweets.

Once she graduates from high school, Karina aspires to become a nurse.  She has had a passion and dream of helping people since she was young.  Becoming a nurse would fulfill this passion.

Karina is emblematic of the wonderful, hard-working students Full Basket Belize supports through its scholarship program.  If you would like to support future deserving students like Karina, please donate to Full Basket Belize.

2023 Community Grant Update

King’s College, a high school located in Lucky Strike, Belize, applied for a Full Basket Belize grant to teach its students the simplest and most affordable way of raising tilapia.  Tilapia provide an excellent source of protein, and raising this fish can provide a steady income as well as food for the family.   Learning about aquaculture involves not only learning how to grow fingerlings (baby tilapia) to fully grown fish but also how to manage the economic aspect of the business.

To implement this project, the students first had to dig the ponds and install the water pump.  The classroom curriculum was instituted, and the Belize Ministry of Agriculture was ready to supply fingerlings.  However, an unexpected lack of rain and the resulting low water table delayed the project until the rains came again and returned the water table to normal.  The Ministry of Agriculture inspected the ponds and delivered the fingerlings.  The students are now busy feeding and raising the tilapia to maturity and preparing them for market.