Girls Fly: Highlighting of Achievements of Women and Teens
The Special Envoy for Children, Kim Simplis Barrow has endorsed a program called Girls Fly. After her first experience in Belize, the organizer of Girls Fly, Gael Sylvia made a heartfelt commitment to showcase the experiences of women in Belize. Sylvia has returned to Belize and she expects that ten thousand girls and women will be equally touched by the program. Standard four, five and six students in the Belize District will be the first to experience Girls Fly from June twenty fourth through June twenty ninth. The Special Envoy, the Deputy Chief Education Officer and the Girls Fly Organizer held a press conference this morning to announce the program.
Gael Sylvia, Girls Fly
Gael Sylvia
“Girls Fly is a one day…in the case of Belize; it will be multiple one day experiences for invited girls and women from the local community to have an experience that empowers them into believing into their dreams, to understand the power of their dreams and to celebrate them. An example of the activity that these young girls and women will experience is that they will arrive at a local site, the Belize Elementary Auditorium, and we’ll actually celebrate their accomplishments because a part of believing in ourselves and instilling a power of belief in others is to celebrate each road mark along that journey to accomplishing your dream. So they will arrive to a really high energy celebration of their graduation from eighth grade for example. They will have opportunities to celebrate with song and dance. And then they will also spend some time with inspirational and motivational speakers. And quite an amazing number of activities will take place during the course of the week and we are doing this to really validate Belize’s greatest treasure and that’s all of the beautiful natural resources here…but really the greatest treasure here in Belize are the people. It’s also to fulfill a commitment that I made to the first lady in 2011 because under her leadership and guidance, she really reflects—along with Miss Babb and Miss Miguel—at every level, what a girl and what a woman can accomplish if they believe in themselves. So we are going to start this first new cycle of generation of women and girls with eighth graders and that transition year from junior high into high school where they are often lost and become confused in terms of their own value and bring before them women of influence and other youth of influence that can reassure them and reaffirm them to keep going and not to give up.”
Kim Simplis Barrow
Kim Simplis Barrow, Special Envoy for Women and Children
“I’m happy to welcome Gael back again to Belize. The first project we worked on was with Project Cure when they donated some equipment to the hospital and U.S. ambassador hosted the group at his residence and now Gael connected with Doctor Babb and I had received information from Miss Miguel about Gael wanting to come back to Belize and to do this exact project which is inspiring our young women and of course this is exactly what we want for our young girls.”
Carol Babb
Carol Babb, Deputy Chief Education Officer, M.O.E.
“We are targeting all schools in the Belize district in the beginning. And Belize District Manager, Jahmor Lopez, he and I will work out a schedule where there will be sessions week of twenty-fourth to the twenty-ninth, where there will be a morning session and an afternoon session. So we will probably come up with north side schools in the morning and maybe south side schools in the afternoon; each session will last about three hours. We are inviting all schools…there is no costs, but schools are expected to bring their students to the site. So they are responsible for their own transportation. And we are also appealing to local business people to support. Gael is already investing a lot of her own funds, so we are appealing to the businesses to help with snacks: juice and water and things like that.”
