September Celebrations Quickly Approaches, NCC Finalizes List of Events

Francis Fonseca

The month of September is quickly approaching and the National Celebrations Commission is finalizing the list of events for the month. Apart from the traditional celebratory events, like the carnival road march, and the Independence Day ceremony, events that were introduced virtually in 2021 will now be held in public venues. Minister Francis Fonseca gave reporters an update on the plans ahead.

Francis Fonseca, Minister of Education, Culture, Science & Technology

“I am very excited about this year’s September celebrations. In fact, tomorrow we have a meeting of the National Celebrations Commission. So, we have a great calendar I believe, an exciting calendar. As usual, we are collaborating with all our stakeholders in culture. So, we have some of the big events, so we are planning for September tenth, Independence Day of course, but we also have the carnival. As the Carnival Association has described it, we deh back pan the road. So, they are excited about that. I think that will be a big show for the Belizean people. As well, we have some other new events we started last year, but those were virtual so I don’t think people got an opportunity to embrace and appreciate them. Those were the award ceremony we have. We started a new award ceremony, so every year the Belizean people nominate people for these specific awards, so, for example, the Andy Palacio Prize for Music and the Leela Vernon Prize for Creole Culture and that sort of thing. We also worked with the University of Belize last year to set up a state of the nation discussion, where the experts from UB discuss the state of our nation. We are doing that again this year and we hope to have a big audience this year. We are having a youth summit as well.”