Reef Week Ready to Make Waves with Annual “Run for the Reef”

Belize’s annual Reef Week is gearing up for a big splash this weekend, and one of its most anticipated events is set to hit the pavement early Saturday morning. More than two hundred runners will gather at Memorial Park at six a.m. for the Run for the Reef, an energizing kickoff organized by the World Wildlife Fund and its partners. It’s all part of a larger push to shine a spotlight on the importance of protecting Belize’s vibrant coral ecosystems. Earlier today, we caught up with WWF Senior Program Officer, Nadia Bood, at the Reef Week Fair in Belize City to learn more about what participants can expect.

 

Nadia Bood, Senior Program Officer, World Wildlife Fund

“Reef Week actually starts last Saturday. It’s an annual event where we have different NGOs other interested groups that are in environmental minded. Comes together and they do different activities throughout the week. It’ll come culminate tomorrow pretty much though. For us as WWF, we have two events that we are hosting within Reef Week. One is the Reef Run, the Run for the Reef, which is tomorrow morning. And in the in the night we have this award ceremony for this mangrove friendly development challenge. The aim of Reef Freak pretty much is to make sure that we are able to share, the important roles that the reef plays for Belize. Whether it be, be it for livelihoods,  whether it be it for food, whether it be it for coastal protection we want to be able to take the time to shine the light on the reef so that people remind are able to remember what the the fact that we have this system, this world class system that is providing so much to us as a country. It’s gonna be starting tomorrow at six am right from Memorial Park. We now have over we have about two hundred person registered and then we have other people that will also be coming that weren’t able to register before they close off. So we are expecting anywhere from two-fifty to three hundred runners tomorrow. We are very excited, but this is also another thing to shed the light on reef.”

 

With hundreds expected to hit the streets at sunrise, organizers say tomorrow’s run is all about reminding Belizeans just how much our reef gives back.

 

Attention readers: This online newscast is a direct transcript of our evening television broadcast. When speakers use Kriol, we have carefully rendered their words using a standard spelling system.

 

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