Participants Must Put in the Work to Succeed

Chester Williams

The youths will have the opportunity as part of the programme to see more of Belize than they ever have, as most of them have only rarely if ever left Belize City in their young lives.  But Deputy Commissioner Chester Williams says they will have to earn it through active and meaningful participation every Saturday.

Chester Williams, Deputy Commissioner (Operations)

“There are several activities that they will be engaged in; we have classroom settings, we have sports, we have life skills and we have an educational tour. Now for them to qualify to go on educational tour, they must earn ten points in a three-week period because the educational tour is after the third week in each month. Once they have earned those points – and the points will come by way of attendance, their attire, their behavior and that sort of thing – and once they earn ten out of fifteen points they will then qualify to go on educational tour. The educational tour can take them anywhere in the country, depending on where the organizers will decide to take them. We have trips to the zoo; we have a tour of Radisson Fort George; we have a tour of the Coast Guard facilities; we have a tour to the butterfly place somewhere in Cayo; we’ll go to the Maya ruin; we will go to the floating boat at eight miles; we’ll go to prison, we’ll do different activities with them. And so this year will be better than the previous one because we have more mentors now and we are now looking at more activities for them. But the most important thing we want them to garner from these activities is to teach them to become better children and to become better persons in the future.”