Belize City – a Child Friendly Municipality in the Making

The Sustainable and Child Friendly Municipality Initiative was introduced back in 2014 to ensure that children feel safe, are provided with the amenities they need, and are healthy and well-informed. As a part of the process, the towns and cities each have a Child Advisory Board where a team of youth actively participate and contribute in the decisions of how their cities are shaped.  On Tuesday, the Belize City Council held one such meeting as it is seeking to become a certified child friendly municipality. Dylan Williams of the National Steering Committee shares how children in Belize City can benefit from this initiative.

Dylan Williams

Dylan Williams, Member, National Steering Committee of SCFM

“One of the things that we are looking at is to ensure that all municipalities become that municipality where you can be able to raise a family, raise a child. Ensure that children, no matter where they are, they are safe, protected from harm and they are not neglected. And when we say that, for example, let’s say in the next five years we want to see that there are safe spaces. So, the parks and playgrounds are clean, yes, but we have ensured that the involvement of children in these kinds of decision making is happening. So, there is a relationship between the municipality which has that responsibility for governance but also the children. So, there is that working relationship with children passing resolutions or the municipality working with the children to pass resolutions that are affecting children. Additionally, when it comes to the wider services, when we are looking at education and the outlook when it comes to education in terms of Belize City and what does that look like. Are our children and young people in Belize City improving when it comes to our education outcomes, in terms of health outcomes, and families within Belize City are having less mortality and less sickness and things like that? So, we’re working towards it and I think in this first phase we are organizing ourselves and as we are moving towards 2030 we will see better outcomes when it comes to our families and children.”