54 Graduate from GREAT Summer Programme

Fifty-four children from the south side of Belize City graduated from the GREAT summer programme today. The children participated in the summer programme for three weeks where they learnt a number of life skills through fun activities. The Community Youth Programme, U.S. Embassy and Belize Police Department sponsored the programme. Officer Commanding Community Policing Elroy Carcamo explains.

Elroy Carcamo, O.C., Community Policing, Eastern Division

“The idea of the programme is to enhance on the GREAT middle and elementary school lessons that have been happening within the schools. So, most of the youths that are here are those who have been participating in the middle and elementary lessons done in the school. What we do with the programme is to teach them leadership skills, teach them more about how to deal with their peers, how to set goals and so on but the summer programme is more interactive, it has more fun activities in it and so it is not just the classroom settings, they have more outdoor settings.    We have them here at Yabra from nine in the morning until three in the evening, so we don’t see them around. Most of that time they are here with us and that is one thing we notice that within the summer program time, we don’t see many kids within the streets walking about. So, it is a good thing we have them doing positive things during the summer time instead of being idle and getting into problems.   This year was a unique year. Usually, the police officers and the facilitators set up the programme and follow the programme straight. But this year we have the kids more involved, so they would say this is what we want to do and they did their own educational presentations and their own research. So, this year the kids got more involved and that is what made it fun for them. So, the presentations are what they want to do, not what we tell them and things like that.”

Elroy Carcamo

Andrea Polanco

“What do you hope the kids take away from this summer programme? How do you hope to see them implement some of the things they have learnt?”

Elroy Carcamo

“What we try to do and what we hope is that they would participate in a lot of positive activities and different programmes in this area or wherever they go. We hope they have better leadership skills and more patience to deal with others.”