New Equipment to Strengthen Services at Women’s Department

Some forty thousand dollars worth of equipment was handed over by the United Nations Development Programme to the Women’s Department. The donation was made possible through the Spotlight Initiative and will assist in strengthening FAMCare within the department. So what will the equipment be used for? It is expected to improve the capacity of the department to collect data which will be used to analyze gender-based violence in Belize.

Elvia Vega-Samos

Elvia Vega-Samos, Minister of State, Human Development

“We’re coming out of the Women’s Month and it will help us when it comes to gender-based violence so that our social workers can actually have access to the computer system, because we have been using these computers that we have for so many years. So it will definitely help. It goes a long way like I said before and we’ve also gotten a firewall system that will help in keeping people’s information confidential and it is very secure. So we are very happy and we are so grateful.”

Ian King

Ian King, Deputy Resident Representative, United Nations Development Programme

“When we first designed Spotlight about three or so years ago, we recognized that the FAMCare program was an important program in Belize so we defined support to strengthen that to ensure that we can have the gender-based violence module as part of FAMCare. But I don’t think there was a full appreciation of capacity and limitations as it related to equipment and so on. And so in the implementation of Spotlight, we were able to identify some areas that we could, for want of a better term, have savings and based on the needs defined by the Ministry of Human Development, we were able to agree and invest in this equipment, which as you heard earlier from the Ministry and Minister and Cynthia Williams is going to be very important to the work that that they need to do because at the end of the day they need the equipment, they need the tools to do the work.”

The donation comprises of fifteen desktop computers, a television, printer, firewall and an upgrade to the FAMCare Case Management system.