Basketball Federation and UNICEF team up
If you’re not up for the military camp, a sporting camp might interest you. The Belize Basketball Federation and UNICEF today launched a youth program for basketball enthusiasts across the country. The youth camp being held under the theme “Ballers for Life” caters to both males and females, between the ages of ten to seventeen years and is intended to provide the fundamentals of the sport, life skills and personal development. News Five spoke with representatives from UNICEF and the Basketball Federation who say the camp will provide over one thousand two hundred kids with positive values.
Julian Murillo, Secretary General, Belize Basketball Federation
“This camp actually signifies the launch of what we call our youth system which forms a major part of our entire four year strategic plan. So we’re actually hoping to have camps just like this twice per year to fill the summer holidays like the one we’re doing now as well as the Easter vacation period as well. So the social benefit that can be arrived from having all those kids off the street doing something worthwhile, doing something for their own personal development we feel is immense for the whole country of Belize.”
Rana Flowers, Belize Representative, UNICEF
“This is part of our overall positive adolescent development approach. So what we are trying to do is to put activities back into the communities to engage young people in positive life-skill building activities over the summer to give them confidence, to give them self-esteem, to give them contact—an adult contact with whom they can build trust, and to build other skills like conflict resolution and the kind of skills you naturally get from sports. Sport is a nation builder. You really build people’s sense of nationality and pride in their nation, but you’re also building children—not just rules and a capacity to work as a team, but you’re building them a number of skills and strengths and productive values that you want our young people to have.”
Basketball stars Milton Palacio and Alex Carcamo will be sharing some of their skills with the participants. If you would like to attend, you can contact the federation’s representatives countrywide.
