Mayflower Youths Trained in Food and Hospitality Service

Ten youths from the Mayflower area in Belize City received their certificates in food preparation and hospitality training today after concluding a summer program with the ITVET through the Department of Youth Services Mayflower Youth Center. As we found out from Jamie Rocke, the program was requested by the residents of the Mayflower area.

Jamie Rocke, Youth Coordinator, Mayflower Youth Center

“This certification course comes with ITVET certification, which many people may not know, is recognized across the region. So, it was definitely a big deal that we wanted to recognize the ten participants who took the course for this summer. The course encompassed a range of different things, so they learned how to bake and cook. They learned customer service. How to engage customers. How to be a service industry employee, so what they are now capacitated with is the skills to be employed at a restaurant, a hotel, anywhere in the tourism industry pretty much.”

Jamie Rocke

Andrea Polanco

“These young people, who are they and how were they selected to participate?”

Jamie Rocke

“Well, we are here at the Mayflower Youth Center and this is an arm of the DYS and the reason why we offered it to this specific community came through the vision of our former social partner Miss Deborah Seawell and saw a need in the community to capacitate young people with soft skills and skill based training. And so this course was actually requested by people of the community, as well as people outside of Mayflower as something that they were interested in. So, we definitely knew that not only would the course be something relevant but something they were excited about and we definitely saw that excitement throughout the course.”

Andrea Polanco

“So, you would say after taking this course, they are ready to wet their feet in the world of work?”

Jamie Rocke

“Definitely. And even more so, we actually have one of the participants already in a position of work and so we are very excited about that; the fact that she finished the course, she was immediately employed because of how well she did in the course. At the Department we have a job enterprise unit which also aids in placement of persons in our training and so we are going to work towards having these people not only trained but in jobs.”