In a heartwarming ceremony filled with hymns, prayer, and room-by-room blessings, a long-held dream of homeownership became reality for a Belize City mother of one on Wednesday, April 30, 2026. After two years of patient waiting and faith, Shanice Castillo, who had spent years living in unstable rental accommodations alongside her daughter and sister, received the keys to her brand new home through a collaborative affordable housing program run by local nonprofit Hand in Hand Ministries and regional financial institution Heritage Bank.
Castillo first applied for the program back in 2024, and described the moment she got her acceptance call as a full-circle realization of the hope she had held for so long. “I applied for 2024, and I went and spoke to Ms. Shannon, and she told me to wait until she called me for a house visit,” Castillo recalled in an interview with local outlet News Five. “She called me for a house visit about a week later, and when I went in, she told me everything that I would need to do, and so far, we did all of that. When she called me again to say, ‘Ms. Castillo, you were accepted to get a house from Heritage,’ I was all excited, because I had already felt it coming, but I was just waiting for the call.”
Unlike many rushed housing assistance initiatives, Hand in Hand Ministries runs a rigorous, community-centered vetting process to ensure homes go to the families that need them most. The process includes initial interviews, in-person home visits to assess current living conditions, and collective case review by the organization’s team. Shannon Stewart, a program coordinator with Hand in Hand Ministries Belize, explained that the intentional screening process ensures every home delivered creates maximum impact for vulnerable communities.
“Normally what we do, we conduct interviews, and we also do interviews in the family homes because we want to get a better understanding of the living situation for the family,” Stewart explained. “Once we collect our necessary data, we take it back to the table and we discuss each and every case carefully because we want to ensure that the person that is chosen is the person that is most in need of the house, and at the end of the day, that was Ms. Shanice Castillo.”
For Castillo, the two-year wait never dimmed her optimism. She said she leaned on her faith throughout the process, confident that her turn would come when the time was right. “Well, I had patience. I waited, I prayed, I left everything in God’s hands, because through Him, all things are possible,” Castillo said. “So I left it in His hands, and when it’s my time, it’s my time. And this is my time, so I have my house, I am a homeowner. Thanks to Hand in Hand and Heritage Bank, I am more than happy and excited, can’t wait for moving.”
Castillo’s new home marks a major milestone for Hand in Hand Ministries, which has been delivering affordable housing to low-income Belizean families for more than two decades. Wednesday’s handover was the 562nd home the organization has completed overall, and the 10th delivered in 2026 alone. Stewart credited the organization’s long-running partnership with Heritage Bank for making this steady progress possible, noting that the bank’s commitment to community impact has only deepened over the years of their collaboration.
“It’s an amazing feeling to be able to work with an organization that looks out for the benefits of people that are in dire need,” Stewart said of the partnership. “The cooperation is great. Each and every year, Heritage Bank comes out with their team, they come out stronger each and every year. They take the time to just give back to our community, to people that are most in need.”
This coming Saturday, Castillo and her small family will move out of their rented accommodation and into their new permanent home — a fresh start that would not have been possible without the cross-sector collaboration between the nonprofit and financial institution. Reporting for News Five, Zenida Lanza contributed to this report.