U.S. Army to build classrooms in Bz., O.W. Districts
Throughout the year, school officials across the country bemoan a lack of classroom space available to students and teachers. But as News Five’s Kendra Griffith reports, this year, members of the United States Military will bring relief to institutions in the Belize and Orange Walk Districts.
Kendra Griffith, Reporting
Today four primary school principals received “certificates of construction”, documents which will ensure that in four months new classrooms will be built in their respective villages. The structures will come courtesy of the U.S. Army’s New Horizon initiative.
Brigadier Gen. Ken Keen, Commander, USARSO
“Starting in March through the month of May 2007, our citizen soldiers, along with the Belize Defence Forces and the Belize government will be constructing four, two-room schools, improving some rural roads along the Crooked Tree school road and Trial Farm. Approximately four hundred and fifty U.S. service men and women representing the U.S. army national guard and U.S. army reserved forces, will be in Belize at any one particular time.”
Brigadier Gen. Lloyd Gillett, Commander, B.D.F.
“They identified four government schools, Hattieville, Trial Farm, Carmelita and Crooked Tree. And all of these schools have needs in terms of capacity, but also some of the buildings that they are presently occupying are a bit deteriorated and some of them are of wooden construction. So it’s creating capacity but also replacing older buildings.”
Today the school principals expressed gratitude for the much needed extra space.
Cruzita Castillo, Principal, Hattieville Govt. School
“We much need this building with the two classrooms. Why? Because we have a growing population and for the past three years that I have been principals at this school, we have had to turn away students because we suffer from over-crowdedness and some of the classrooms are very, very small.”
Virginia Coh, V.P., Trial Farm Government School
“We are very thankful right now because we had to take the computer room and use it as a classroom because we are really in need of classrooms at the moment.”
Verla Jex, Principal, Crooked Tree Government School
“Our preschool right now is in a very small wooden building and the population of the students there has definitely outgrown that building. There is not space for the different corners that they need to have, so yes we really need this building.”
Perla Hoy, Ag. Principal, Carmelita Government School
“It has been a long-awaited dream for us at Carmelita. We have been lobbying every year for a new classroom, at least one, and now we have been blessed with two along with latrine facilities. So that is very great for us, we are very, very grateful to the U.S. Army and the Belize Defence Force.”
In addition to the school buildings, the U.S. soldiers will also be proving Belizeans with basic medical and dental care.
Lloyd Gillett
“We have a DENTRETE that will take place in the Orange Walk Sporting Complex. That will begin in March and then a MEDRETE that will attach the villages in the Belize district: Hattieville, Ladyville that will begin in April. The end of this month, January, we have a MEDRETE that will take place in the rural villages of Punta Gorda.”
Ken Keen
“This cooperation between our two countries demonstrates not only the continued efforts of the U.S. support for our neighbours in the Caribbean and Latin America, but also the importance of joint training between our armed forces to meet the 21st Century challenges such as humanitarian and disaster relief assistance.”
And according to Commander of the U.S. Army South, Brigadier General Ken Keen, that assistance will continue, even though the United States is bogged down with a war in Iraq.
Ken Keen
“It goes towards the challenges we all face in the region, whether it be preparing ourselves for natural disasters or investing in the future of our countries, which is truly the youth, so this is important enough and I think the message is even with everything else going on in the world, we need to continue investing our time and our resources here in our own hemisphere to ensure the security as well as the social development for the future.”
The New Horizons exercise has been conducted in Belize since 1994. This year’s project is estimated to cost three hundred and sixty thousand U.S. dollars.
Kendra Griffith reporting for News Five.
New Horizon is not the only cause for celebration for the Belize Defence Force. Two of their soldiers, Lt. Ermil Coh and Lt. Kenrick Martinez, recently graduated from the Royal Marines Commander Training Young Officers Course in the United Kingdom. Lt. Coh and Martinez are the first two B.D.F. soldiers to have completed the fifteen month course.
