Hundreds of students attend the annual Children’s Rally

The annual Children’s Rally in Belize City was held today at the Holy Redeemer Parish Hall. Approximately a thousand students gathered inside the hall for the event which seeks to promote patriotism among youth; paying homage to the Battle of Saint George’s Caye and Belize’s Independence. It took a little over a week to put the presentations together which had the students showing their patriotism through drama, dance, song and poetry. Creative Arts Coordinator at the Ministry of Education, Leroy Green, spoke on putting the fun-filled event together.

Leroy Green, Coordinator, Children’s Rally 2013 – 2014

Leroy Green

“It was put together at a rather short notice. What I did was keep all the items focused around this year’s theme. If you noticed all the items were not one one items; it was all on the topic of Belize which I wrote particularly for this program here today. It was four different schools coming together for that. We had All Saints, St. Joseph’s, St. John’s Anglican and Ebenezer. Even the dance which followed you would notice that it was an African type dance and the nationalistic song that was song by St. John’s Vianney; that was also composed by myself. So I really tried this year to keep it patriotic and centered around the theme that we are celebrating under this year. It shows that with practice and with training teachers can impart the knowledge, the content that is included in the creative arts and it shows that with practice the children can enhance their performance and their skills.”

Patrick Faber

Patrick Faber, Minister of Education

“And I want to encourage you boys and girls to spend some time talking to the older people—talking to your mommy and daddy or your granny and grandpa—in order to find out some of the things that Belize is all about. Because a lot of what we see today is the new Belize, but there is an old Belize as well. And that is why it is so important and so fitting that we have this theme, “Belize in You, Belize in Me…” There are different cultures as we saw in your presentations. There are different ages of people; there are different colors of people and we can all find out and appreciate more what Belize is all about if we just look at each other and we talk with each other much more.”