Belize City daycare officially opens expanded facility
For many educational institutions in Belize City, overcrowding is a serious problem that forces administrators to turn away students every year. But today, one local daycare centre held official opening ceremonies for its recently expanded facility. According to Director of the Catholic Diocesan Child Development Centre, Tomasa Smith, the extra space will allow as many as forty more boys and girls to access their services. This afternoon Smith told us exactly how the centre has been upgraded.
Tomasa Smith, Dir., Catholic Diocesan Child Dev. Centre
?For us it?s a dream come true. We have been wanting this for some years now and finally we have our new expansion. Now we have a kitchen, finally have a dining room, we don?t have to eat outside on the corridor, and we also have a new section. We also have a multiple purpose hall for when it rains and we cannot bring the children out in the yard, we have place for them.?
?First we had to turn away children because we had limited space. And for last September, because we anticipated we needed the space for the expansion we just didn?t take in enough children, so now we are open and we are asking people now to come in and register.?
Janelle Chanona
?Now couple times before you had some really bad break-ins, what have you done in terms of security to secure your new facilities??
Tomasa Smith
?Well, after the last break-in, Bishop O.P. Martin, he did bars on all doors and since then we have been much safer, haven?t had any more break-ins, so we are happy right now.?
The C.D.C.D.C. is located at the corner of Oleander Street and Rose Lane. The cost of the addition to the centre is estimated at one hundred sixty-nine thousand dollars, financed through community fundraising, the Social Investment Fund, and the Government of Belize. Manual work in the project was also contributed by Hand in Hand Ministries. The structure was built by Coleman Construction with Young’s Engineering Consultancy Limited supervising the project.
