Church donates books to govt.
They are not a high profile organisation, but today the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, better known as the Mormons, went public with a donation of books and educational materials to the Ministry of Education. According to Belize District President, Joel Munoz, the books are part of the church’s community outreach efforts.
Joel Munoz, District President
“The books came from our Salt Lake centre in Utah, so we are very please to be making this donation today. As was mentioned in the presentation, the books cover quite a wide range of education scope from the infant stage even to the resource stage for the teachers. So we believe that, we hope that it is going to be something of value to as wide a spectrum as possible in the education field in Belize… We have tried to be involved with humanitarian services everywhere and certainly in Belize so, as a Belizean myself, I am very grateful for this because we recognize the efforts of our educators and teachers. We know that they face a very challenging task of having to deal with social problems in the school and very often poorly recognized for their efforts.”
Maude Hyde, Chief Education Officer
“Well its really is an encouraging move. It is a very positive support, because reading is one of the areas that we try to encourage in our schools. We know that for a long while teachers have been complaining that this is an area of weakness. So to be able to put books in schools that don’t really have libraries is definitely an asset… In previous donations we have distributed most of those books to the northern districts and we feel that Stann Creek deserves to get most of these books now because they were left out of the distribution in the earlier donation.”
Patrick Jones
“What kinds of books were donated to the ministry?”
Maude Hyde
“It’s a wide variety ranging from text books dealing with different subject areas like science, mathematics and just general reading for enjoyment.”
But the Mormons were not the only ones handing out reading materials today. This morning the National Library Service was the recipient of over two hundred assorted books, courtesy of Belize Water Services. According to Chief Librarian Joy Ysaguirre, the books, all authored by Belizeans, will be used by the National Library Service in its countrywide mobile library programme. The bookmobile visits remote areas of the country where there are no formal libraries. The B.W.S. donation is valued at just over eight thousand dollars.
