Port Loyola Day Care Centre opens
While seniors at the Sister Cecilia Home will be benefiting from gifts sent by Belizeans abroad, some children on the other side of town now have somewhere to stay while their mothers go to work. News Five was there for the opening of a child care center at the corner of Gil and Sanker Streets.
The children, with the help of Dolores Balderamos Garcia, area representative and Minister of Human Development, cut the ribbon officially opening their Port Loyola Day Care Centre. While most of the center’s babies were just too sleepy to stay awake for the occasion, the older children and the adults enjoyed a tour of the day care.
Jenny Craig, Chairperson, Port Loyola Day Care
“We see the need to help some of the mothers in Port Loyola who have to go to work at a very early hour. We really plan to give the mothers of Port Loyola and I should say not only Port Loyola but all the other areas in the city of Belize a chance.”
The mothers we spoke with say it was hard trying to seek employment or going to work because there was no place for their children to spend the day.
Diana Lewis, Working Mother
“I am very glad that we are able to have a center for us working mothers; that there will be people here to take care of our kids while we are at work now.”
Q: “What did you do before?”
Diana Lewis
“Well I work and then I leave my kids with my sisters. So we will be better off because there will be a day care center and also they will be learning different things to bring them into preschool and so forth.”
The center, which will be open from six in the morning until six in the evening, will also cater to those children who attend Port Loyola Preschool.
Jenny Craig
“We won’t only be having young babies, we will be having children that will be attending the Port Loyola Preschool. So our workers here at the preschool will be helping them with their studies probably teach them their ABC and help them with their 123 you know, in whatever way they can.”
The center will have a staff of three women who have received training. Presently the day care can accommodate fifteen children but there are plans to expand the service.
The Port Loyola Day Care is subsidized by the Government of Belize and through private donations. The center’s fee is twenty dollars a week per child. But if a parent truly cannot afford this, Craig says they will accept a payment as low as five dollars. Those who will be sending more than two children will be charged thirty dollars a week.
