SPEAR celebrates 33 years

Today, a local non-governmental organisation marked its thirty-third anniversary of service in Belize. The Society for the Promotion of Education and Research, SPEAR, was officially established on May sixteenth, 1969. Since then, they have been active advocates on a wide range of issues in order to improve the quality of life and standard of living in Belize. This afternoon, News 5 spoke to SPEAR’s Executive Director Mervin Lambey, who discussed their initiatives and plans for the future.

Mervin Lambey, Executive Dir. SPEAR

“SPEAR plays a pivotal role I believe, in that we’re here to help support those groups or those individuals who are interested in participating in a decision making process. From the political reform movement that we’ve helped to lead since 1966, we are noticing that the decision making has been centred around a few people and we think that need to be expanded that more people have an input into the direction the entire development process takes in Belize.

We are still doing that, we’ve been very active with the political reform movement, with land reform. We collaborated with the Ministry of Rural Development to do training for Village Councils and village leaders. And we’ve been trying to do institutional growth and institutional sustainability activities, will keep us existing for a longer time, to be the social justice advocate, good governance and that type of thing. Certainly, we’re trying to apply more concepts, we’re trying to be a little more practical and to respond to people’s needs and wants so that people will buy into what we’re trying to push and then together SPEAR and the people, we can persuade the policy makers to make the changes that are necessary.”

According to Lambey, through an agreement with the Cuban government, they will be making scholarships available to Belizeans for bachelor, postgraduate and technical degrees on a wide range of courses. Please contact SPEAR at their offices on Gentle Avenue for more information.