National Sports Council Hands Over Cheque for Participation in CODICADER 2019

Patrick Faber

A twenty-five thousand-dollar cheque was this morning handed over to the National Secondary Schools Sports Association and the Belize Association of Principals of Secondary Schools. It is the first half of a fifty thousand-dollar contribution by the National Sports Council for the 2018 CODICADER Games to be held in September of this year in Panama. The investment is the first of its kind for the Sports Council and Director Ian Jones says it will help with the development of the young athletes. Minister of Sports Patrick Faber says it was a necessary investment.

Patrick Faber, Minister of Sports

“Sometimes in the past it caught us by surprise and that was because we didn’t have the kind of marriage that we had now with the Ministry of Sports and Education. And so the BAPSS, the Association of Principals and the NSSSA have always come to the Ministry of Education given that our students are involved, to ask for support. And so when we married the portfolios, we thought that it is wise for us to put something in the budget for us. So what you see is fifty thousand—twenty-five thousand to go towards the registration process and another twenty-five thousand that will go towards helping our teams to look good and represent us well in terms of their jerseys and so on when they go to the games.”

Ian Jones

Ian Jones, Director, National Sports Council

“When I was in high school and an athlete and we had to represent Belize, we as students had to go out and solicit funds in order to represent the country. From then I didn’t like the process; I didn’t believe that if I am representing the country I should be soliciting my own funds. So this is a small part that the National Sports Council is doing to help curve things of the sort. In addition to that, we will also be signing an MOU in the near future with NSSA and BAPSS to further this relationship with Sports Council and the two organizations.”