UNICEF initiatives target poorest district
On Friday UNICEF officials in Belize released their annual report on the State of the World’s Children. That the venue of the press launch was the Toledo District was no accident: Toledo, as most Belizeans know, is as poor as it is ruggedly beautiful. News 5’s Jacqueline Woods has more.
Jacqueline Woods, Reporting
The United Nations Children?s Fund reports that in Belize, children are forty percent more likely than any other population group to suffer from poverty. In fact, UNICEF states that two out of every five Belizean children do not have access to proper nutrition, safe water, birth registration, education and health.
This is a typical day at Crique Jute Government School in the Toledo District. These students like so many of their peers in other rural communities, attend classes under difficult circumstances.
Jacqueline Woods
?Toledo is the poorest district in Belize. In 2002, the Central Statistical Office conducted a survey. It was reported that eight out of every ten children are living in poverty.?
Children who are born into poverty are more likely to be severely malnourished and vulnerable to disease. In 2003 one thousand births were recorded in the Toledo District, but twenty-five of those babies died before their first birthday. Not only is poverty responsible for the high infant mortality rate but it also influences their ability to attend school. A survey conducted by the Central Statistical Office indicates that only a bit more than half of those children who enrol in primary school eventually graduate from standard six.
Julius Casimiro, District Education Manager
?Some of the parents are in the practice of keeping the children back at home to do chores like babysitting, taking up the water, cleaning up so as to free up the parents to do other things like taking care of the meals or even to go to the milpa.?
?In some cases there are still parents who believe that education doesn?t really put food on the table so it?s not strange that some of these parents would take the children out of school to do milpa work or farm work.?
Judith Alpuche, Executive Director, Nat?l Com. For Children/Families
?Children not getting the proper nutrition from a very early age really impacts them developmentally their cognitive ability, just their structural and physical development in every way. Poverty also creates a huge barrier to children accessing things like early education, preschool, being properly stimulated in some cases, if some parents don?t have the information, having access to proper health care.?
Victor Salam, Principal, Crique Jute Primary School
?Since the establishment of the school here, let say ten years ago, the pupils have been depending on the old water pump, hand pumps out there and many times it would run out of water. So sometimes the children they had to go to wells out far from the school to collect water and we know that the water there could be contaminated.?
Despite the hardships they face, the children of Toledo continue to enjoy life. The fact is that many of their families do not recognize that there is a problem…only that it has been a way of life for centuries.
Roy Bowen, Country Program Officer, UNICEF
?What we will have to do with families and I am saying, all of us will have to do this, is to create a situation where people see that there is something better and would want to do it. It cannot be externally driven; it has to be done from within the families within the communities.?
UNICEF has spent the last three years improving conditions in the far south to help schoolchildren receive their basic needs like access to safe water. Today, two water tanks placed at Crique Jute Government School provide the children with that precious necessity of life.
Nadya Vasquez, Country Representative, UNICEF
?Our interests is try to strengthen the capacity of the organisation and institution to coordinate efforts with the participation of the people in the community to elaborate plans that can support and fight against the poverty that this district suffers.?
Last year, the students of San Jose R.C Primary School witnessed the addition of two new classrooms. The gift from UNICEF, the Government of Ireland, Government of Belize and the community, addressed the growing problem of congestion.
Madonio Cal, Principal, San Jose R.C. Toledo
?It improved the situation by having more space; it was one time, when we requested for this building that we have two class rooms. The one classroom that is being used for dual purposes for library and for a classroom, but now since we have this new building we have the standard two and standard three using the building at this time.?
Recent history has taught us that there are no overnight answers to the problem of poverty in Toledo, Belize or anywhere in the world. But the important thing is that the process begins, has a goal and a plan to achieve that goal. Here in Toledo, the district with the longest travel, that process is inching forward well by well, classroom by classroom. Jacqueline Woods for News 5.
