UNICEF DONATES TO ORGANIZATIONS

September 19, 2007

Earlier this week UNICEF made a contribution of more than 25 thousand dollars to four organizations. Rana Flowers in UNICEF’s Belize Representative. Rana Flowers, UNICEF’s Belize Representative:“UNICEF has ongoing programs with a number of organizations in Belize.Our goal is to focus on achievement,and promoting achievement as the development goal,and for us,we fill that means that we have to reach the most excluded,that we have to reach in to communities or to those groups who we feel have been neglected and need more support.So what we’ve done this week as part of an ongoing program is actually to contribute a range of equipment to civil organizations.They include the Garifuna Council,Mayan Leaders Association,the Statistics Institute of Belize,and Hand in Hand Ministries here in Belize City.Each of those contributions is designed to improve their technical capacity so that they can in turn reach the young children who we are working with them to reach.” Flowers told us how the contributions will be used. Rana Flowers, UNICEF’s Belize Representative:“What we’re trying to do for example with the contribution to the Garifuna Council and the Mayan Leaders is to reinforce the right to education,to learn in a caring and culturally sensitive environment.So we have provided them with equipment that will enhance their capacities in the school to provide intercultural and bilingual education,as well as to preserve the culture and that’s a big issue..I think what we can say in relation to the Garifuna culture,their dance,beautifully preserved,that part of the arts isn’t going to be lost,whereas in the Mayan culture,we’re seeing that the arts are preserved but the dance and other aspects are lost.We’re working with them to ensure that they are able to be preserved,this cultural element.With the Statistics Institute,we’ve had a long association with them which is being designed to create an independent and highly efficient statistical institute in Belize.We had worked with them on the legislation for the institute on creating human resources and identifying through the association for example with Trinidad where the good models of statistical institutes are,and now this is being played out in the program this year in terms of providing them with equipment that will allow them to  desegregate data,to help us target where the most excluded are,and to identify which of the groups that we need to be working more with.And then finally the contribution to the Hand in Hand Ministries,it’s an organization who is doing very effective outreach to families and children who are affected and infected by HIV/AIDS and they are working with us now to develop a database for the first time.I’d have to say that orphans and vulnerable children,they are infected or affected by HIV are perhaps one of the most neglected groups in Belize and we are really trying to bring attention to their needs,working to create an environment where the government sees a need for them to get and have a safety net with much more support  their receiving at the moment and to ensure that the can access schooling and care as any other child.”  Rana Flowers, UNICEF’s Belize Representative.

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