Pack for a Purpose: Celebrating Guest Contributions

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Tags: #Guest contributions#impact travel#Pack for a Purposeschool supplies

It’s that exciting time of year again when hundreds of children have started  back to school. Smiling children waving to friends after spending a summer apart, eager teachers greeting new students and proud parents watching their kids ready to take on the world. This scene is repeated in countless schools all around the world including rural villages in Belize. 

Many of these schools face significant and varied needs, and Hamanasi guests continue to fill some of those gaps by giving back while traveling.  This year, seven schools have been beneficiaries of contributions made by the generous donations of Hamanasi’s guests. It is through these philanthropic gifts that these schools have been able to rehabilitate infrastructure, create a comfortable learning environment for students, provide a feeding program, and assist families in need with much appreciated school books and supplies. 

1,300 Pounds, 160 Families

Pack for a Purpose funds purchased reading and math books for the Holy Family Primary School in Hopkins Village.

Hamanasi is a proud partner with Pack for a Purpose which allows guests to either contribute school supplies from our needs list or to make monetary contributions, which are used to support the various needs of primary schools in surrounding communities. This past year over 1,300 pounds of school supplies have been donated by over 143 guests and their families! This has left a positive impact on approximately 160 Belizean families. 

18 Employees

Hamanasi staff organize and fill backpacks with school supplies donated by guests through Pack for a Purpose. 

This year, 18 Hamanasi staff members participated in organizing and distributing Pack for a Purpose donations brought by our generous guests.  They reflected that the most common donation was pencils – a very useful donation.  The most helpful and needed items were school bags, notebooks, calculators and geometry sets.

$3,340+ Donated

In the past two years, over $3,340 USD was donated to the Pack for a Purpose initiative.  These monetary contributions assisted the rehabilitation of the Hopkins preschool, which burned down in the summer of 2022.  They allowed for improvements in infrastructure at St. Jude’s Primary School in the Maya Center community and at the Silk Grass Primary School. Additionally, these funds helped establish a feeding program at the Sittee River School.

7 Schools

Photos by Jackie Gamboa

Beyond these projects, guests that have donated school bags and school supplies can appreciate the heartwarming smiles of children receiving those items. Children from in need families in the Hopkins, Maya Center, Silk Grass and Sittee River communities are the usual beneficiaries of these school supplies. Happily, this year with the increased number of contributions from Hamanasi’s generous guests, we were able to expand our reach to include families in more villages and towns within the Stann Creek and Toledo districts.  A  total of 7 schools received donations of school supplies. 

Infinite Thanks

Thank you for your contributions and making a positive impact on the communities surrounding Hamanasi! 

164 children from several communities in southern Belize benefitted from school bags and school supplies brought in from 143 Hamanasi guests this past season. We thank each of our guests who contributed towards this initiative leaving a positive impact and living their values through travel.  

If you would like to learn more about Pack for a Purpose or view the list of needed items, please continue reading with this link.