Scotiabank offers aid for education

By all accounts, there are thousands of Belizean children in need of financial support to complete their education. And tonight we are happy to report one corporate citizen is chipping in to make a difference.

Pat Andrews, Managing Director, Scotiabank (Belize) LTD.
?We think that it is very important for us to connect. We connect with our customers and now what we are doing is that we have to step up and connect more with our community.?

Over the next five years Scotia Bank Belize will be spending one hundred and seventy-eight thousand dollars assisting primary school students with books and tuition. As part initiative, the school children will also be provided with a well balanced meal.

Pat Andrews
?On an annual basis we will select two schools that we consider very needy for us to be able to give them five thousand Belize dollars per year to help with feeding programmes.?

School principals across the country will be providing the financial institution with the names of children in need of support. According to Managing Director of Scotiabank, Pat Andrews, participants in the programme will also be mentored during the school year.

Pat Andrews
?And out of those list of needy children countrywide we will be selecting fifty countrywide for us to give them a tuition/book grant of about three hundred dollars per year.?

?We are hoping that this process can be finalized let?s say the selection process by mid-December. That would mean that some of the students that have been selected will be getting or the parents will be getting reimbursed for the expenses that the student had for the beginning of the year.?

To fund the education program in the future, Scotiabank (Belize) Limited will be hosting fund raising drives at its branches countrywide. Andrews says it was the findings of a UNICEF study that prompted them to extend a helping hand.

Pat Andrews
?The study indicated that only sixty-two percent of the primary school students moved on to secondary school. We thought that that needed.?

Funds to support this year’s programme were made possible by Scotiabank’s head office, the Bank of Nova Scotia in Canada.