Child Rights Ambassadors Chosen

Since its inception, the National Committee for Families and Children, NCFC, has been championing the rights, welfare and development of Belizean families and children. The statutory body is legally mandated to promote, monitor and evaluate Belize’s compliance with its national and international commitments to children. Today, phase two of the Child Rights Ambassador Program was launched at the BTEC Conference Room on the ITVET Compound in Belize City. It’s a program that has been in the pipeline for some time at NCFC and targets youths who want to be a voice for other younger people. The training workshop held today saw key stakeholders making presentations to the aspiring CRC Ambassadors on tools currently in place to protect children.

Lindbergh Smith, Information Education & Communication Coordinator, NCFC

“The idea is to have a child rights ambassador in each district where these ambassadors will be enlightening children about their rights and sensitizing the general public at large; teachers, parents about understanding the importance of children rights and adhering to children rights as well.”

Lindbergh Smith

Duane Moody

“What is the goal? What is the importance of this in terms? Is it that people don’t know or children don’t know what their rights are and parents likewise don’t know what the rights of children are?”

Lindbergh Smith

“I think what happened over the years, people have come to realize that children have rights, but yet too often we don’t emphasize children rights. And so we thought—because NCFC is so small as an organization—there is only so much we can do and we decided to spread our wings a little to use ambassadors to carry out our mandate. And the idea for this training is basically training young people between the ages of eighteen and thirteen, who have the time and interest of becoming a CRC Ambassador. Those ambassadors will be having a three day training which looks at various topics by a number of facilitators. Some of the topics include the children and family Act; an overview on the Convention on the Rights of a Child and we have a representative from UNICEF doing that. We also will be looking at the Juvenile and Penal Reform Act which we will have Miss Natalia Carter doing that, who is the magistrate from the Belize Family Court. And we will also be having the Labor Commissioner, Mister Ivan Williams, doing some kind of presentation on Child Labor—what is child labor and the forms of child labor. And we also will be having the mandatory reporting people from the Human Development [Department] to come in and also educate these people on how to go about reporting casing in regards to child abuse and things like that.”