标签： Belize

Against a backdrop of steeply rising global food costs that have put severe financial strain on household budgets across small developing nations, Belize has seen a quiet grassroots movement take root: ordinary citizens are turning even the smallest patches of urban backyard space into productive home gardens, cutting grocery expenses and reclaiming food security one seed at a time. What began as a practical coping mechanism for ballooning market prices has grown into a community-wide shift that empowers people to take control of their food supply, regardless of how little land they have available.

In the densely populated coastal neighborhood of Buttonwood Bay in Belize City, long-time resident Michelle Sampson has transformed her modest backyard into a thriving, diverse urban farm that supplies nearly all of her family’s fresh produce. Ten years ago, Sampson launched her garden as a way to process personal grief after a major loss; today, her small plot boasts five varieties of tomatoes, leafy lettuce, sweet bell peppers, bananas, plantains, strawberries, raspberries, grapes, rosemary, basil and cabbage, all growing in the limited space of a suburban residential yard.

Sampson says the garden has drastically cut her monthly grocery bill, eliminating the need to buy the most expensive fresh produce at local markets. She also wants to dispel the common myth that growing your own food requires large plots of land or natural gardening talent. Even renters with no permanent yard can grow produce in containers on verandahs, she notes, and anyone can start small with just one plant to test their skills. “If you keep saying, oh I can’t grow this, I don’t have a green thumb, you will never know what you can do,” Sampson explained in an on-site interview. “You can start with one tomato plant. I have friends that grow them in pots on the verandah if you are renting. You can always take them with you. You have a space on the side, you can just do one little plot.”

The movement to embrace small-scale home food production is not limited to adult home gardeners. At Belize’s Sadie Vernon High School, students are already learning the skills to launch their own backyard growing systems, building a campus aquaponics project that combines vegetable cultivation with freshwater fish farming in a compact, self-sustaining cycle. Students Joselin Sanchez and Mildreth Gonzalez manage the system under the guidance of their teacher Malaak Middleton, monitoring growth, maintaining water quality, and tracking the project’s progress as part of their coursework.

The small aquaponics setup already produces a steady supply of white cucumber, cabbage, peppers, and edible fish, all grown organically by the students. Sanchez notes that the cyclical, self-reproducing nature of aquaponics makes it an ideal long-term solution for households struggling with high food costs, helping families cut hundreds of dollars in annual grocery expenses. For Gonzalez, the project has added a layer of personal satisfaction that goes beyond cost savings: “I have actually eaten the white cucumber that is really delicious. And it feels good, because we grow it and it’s our achievement and we eat it and it is good.”

Middleton says the project is designed to inspire the next generation to embrace home food growing as a lifelong practical skill, hoping the experience will add lasting value to her students’ lives and encourage them to share their knowledge with their families and wider communities. “Teachers serve as an inspiration and I am hoping that I have served as one in these kids’ life,” Middleton said. “I am hoping this brings value to their life and in turn the community.”

While Sampson’s garden grew from personal loss and the high school project began as an educational initiative, both examples illustrate the same core truth: most of the fresh produce that households regularly purchase at the market can be grown at home, even in tiny urban spaces. As food prices continue to strain household budgets across Belize, this grassroots movement of backyard farming has proven to be an accessible, empowering lifeline that puts food security back in the hands of individual families and communities. Reporting for News Five, Paul Lopez contributed to this report.

In an era defined by rapid social media expansion, where engagement-driven algorithms prioritize shocking, viral content over responsible publishing, child welfare advocates in Belize are sounding the alarm over the irreversible harm careless online sharing of children’s information inflicts on young people. Scheduled for May 6, 2026, a collaborative workshop led by the National Commission for Families and Children (NCFC) brought together media outlets, independent online news page operators, and social media content creators to address the growing crisis of unregulated sharing of minors’ personal data, images, and sensitive case details.

Shakira Sutherland, executive director of the NCFC, opened the workshop by outlining the core risk at hand: too often, outlets and unregulated independent content creators post unrestricted details of children’s lives—including their full names, ages, residential locations, and identifiable imagery—that have no place on public digital platforms. While traditional media outlets have historically collaborated with the NCFC to implement child protection safeguards, Sutherland emphasized that unregulated independent social media news pages, most commonly hosted on Facebook, have become the primary source of harmful content dissemination. These platforms frequently spread inaccurate information, publish identifiable footage of vulnerable children, and allow harmful viral comment threads to fester, creating damage that extends far beyond the initial post.

“This information can erode a child’s self-image, and cause long-term harm to their emotional, mental, and even physical well-being,” Sutherland explained. “That is why we are calling on every person that shares public content online to pause and think through the impact before hitting post.”

Ganesha Smith, acting director of Belize’s Community Rehabilitation Department, who works directly with youth that have encountered the justice system, expanded on these risks, highlighting the particularly damaging impact of sensationalized media coverage of children in conflict with the law or child abuse victims. Smith explained that sensationalized framing of youth incidents does more than embarrass minors—it locks them into a permanent public negative identity that is extremely difficult to escape. This persistent labeling often pushes vulnerable youth to fall deeper into harmful patterns of behavior, rather than supporting their rehabilitation.

Smith noted that derogatory commentary and repeated sharing of a minor’s case across platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok normalizes harmful narratives. Over time, these narratives become internalized by the youth themselves, leading to higher rates of repeat legal encounters and a regression away from positive behavioral change. She added that harmful, unfair narratives are pervasive regardless of whether a child is a victim of abuse or an offender in a criminal case: too often, coverage frames child abuse victims as responsible for their own harm, and youth offenders as inherently defiant, rather than acknowledging the complex systemic and personal factors that lead to these incidents. The workshop’s core goal, Smith said, is to shift this cultural narrative and change the content-sharing mindset that prioritizes viral engagement over child safety.

Crucially, the workshop’s message did not call for complete media silence on stories involving children. Instead, organizers emphasized that permanent digital footprints created by careless online publishing stay with children for decades, long after the general public has moved on from the original story. By encouraging intentional, child-first content decisions, advocates hope to reduce the long-term harm that unregulated online sharing inflicts on Belize’s most vulnerable young population.

Against a backdrop of steady, widespread increases in national food costs, a quiet grassroots movement is taking hold across Belize: growing numbers of local residents are transforming unused home spaces into personal backyard food gardens to cut household expenses and shore up access to affordable fresh produce.

In Belize’s largest urban center, Belize City, even small, underused yards and empty lot plots are getting new life as productive growing spaces. Residents are planting a wide range of fruits, leafy greens, culinary herbs, and vegetables that their families would typically purchase from local grocery stores and outdoor markets. For many households, this shift has delivered dual benefits: shrinking monthly grocery spending while expanding daily access to nutrient-dense, freshly harvested food.

Michelle Sampson, a long-time resident of the Belize City community of Buttonwood Bay, says turning her backyard into a community-focused garden has fundamentally changed her household’s financial outlook. “You can’t beat that feeling of stepping out your back door and harvesting exactly what you need for dinner,” Sampson explained, gesturing to her lush plot brimming with ripe tomatoes, crisp sweet peppers, leafy lettuce, bunches of fresh herbs, and ripening banana stalks. She noted that growing her own produce has allowed her to skip buying many of the market items that have jumped in price over recent months, taking significant pressure off her monthly budget.

The movement toward local, small-scale food production is also spreading to educational institutions, where schools are integrating sustainable growing practices into their curricula to build long-term food literacy. At Sadie Vernon High School, students operate an innovative aquaponics program that raises fish alongside vegetable crops, creating a closed-loop sustainable production system that doubles as a hands-on learning opportunity. The program introduces young people to practical, eco-friendly food growing techniques that they can bring home to their own families.

Joselin Sanchez, a student participating in the program, says the project demonstrates how accessible, circular growing systems can offer a tangible solution to the country’s rising food cost crisis. “This system shows we don’t have to rely only on expensive store-bought food — we can grow our own in a way that wastes nothing and feeds our communities,” Sanchez said.

Program educators add that the initiative also works to reframe agriculture as a valuable life skill, rather than just an industry, highlighting how small-scale growing can deliver shared benefits for entire local communities. This full report will air tonight on News 5 Live at 6 p.m.

In the capital city of Belize, a single outdoor alcohol advertisement has ignited a fiery nationwide debate over public morality, gender representation, and the normalization of harmful content in shared public spaces. At the center of the growing outcry is Senator Louis Wade Jr., a church-affiliated lawmaker who also operates one of Belize’s only alcohol rehabilitation facilities, who has become the most high-profile voice demanding the immediate removal of the controversial billboard positioned at Belmopan’s main city entrance.

The advertisement in question features Trinidadian musician Nailah Blackman in what critics describe as a sexually suggestive pose, while holding a product from an alcohol brand that has drawn repeated criticism for its marketing tactics. Wade has echoed the growing frustration of thousands of Belizean residents who argue the billboard violates widely held community standards of public decency, framing the display as more than just a marketing misstep — as a dangerous amplification of preexisting social crises gripping the small Caribbean nation.

Speaking to Plus TV News, the media outlet owned by Wade himself, the senator laid out his sharp condemnation: “I want to join my voice along with thousands of other Belizeans in Belmopan and around the country that say that this billboard needs to be removed because it violates the sensibilities of respectable Belizeans.” He pushed back against claims that the controversy over the ad is a distraction from more urgent national issues, arguing that residents of the capital have consistently prioritized advocacy for public values that affect daily community life.

Wade went further, linking the billboard’s content to three of Belize’s most pressing social challenges: high rates of sexual abuse, pervasive domestic violence, and widespread problematic alcohol consumption. He called out the brand behind the ad for a pattern of problematic marketing, noting that the company has long targeted women with aggressive alcohol promotion, incorporated marijuana-themed imagery into its product packaging, and now relies on overtly sexualized depictions of women to drive sales. “This is the sexualisation of women,” Wade stated. “This is literally taking advantage of the weakness within the population in a very undignified manner.”

His position as the operator of an alcohol treatment center gives him unique standing to speak on the harms of irresponsible alcohol marketing, he argued: “I sit here running one of the country’s only alcohol rehabs. So if we can’t speak against alcohol, then who can?”

The debate has split public opinion, with some residents dismissing the controversy as an overreaction to a standard commercial advertisement, while others have labeled the display harmful, disrespectful, and completely unsuitable for public viewing. The uproar has also pushed broader questions about Belize’s regulatory framework for public advertising, and what content the nation chooses to normalize in shared public spaces that all community members, including children, access daily.