NOPCA recruits new volunteers

The National Organization for the Prevention of Child Abuse, NOPCA, continues its campaign for children who are abused whether it be physically, sexually or emotionally. This month the organization is holding a series of volunteer training programs in an attempt to improve its human resource base. NOPCA realizes that to continue its work, the implementation of such programs have become necessary especially considering that most N.G.O.’s are financially unsustainable. The first three-week session will be completed this week and Lorna McDougal, the Executive Director of NOPCA explains what the sessions are about.

Lorna McDougal, Executive Director, NOPCA

“The programs, we have volunteers that we are training in two areas. One, the younger people will be trained to go into the schools and talk to the children about child abuse prevention, how to handle anger and conflict. These are the people who have time during the day to be able to do that. And then we also have another set of volunteers who will be assisting with the parenting empowering program. These are the more older, mature volunteers. The second phase will be dealt with preparing volunteers to work with parents. So it’s going to be a skills training program, helping them to understand how to work with people, how to get parents motivated, to get them out to come to these workshops, the various skills and techniques of implementing a workshop.”

McDougal says that NOPCA has been very successful in its fight against child abuse in Belize. She says that there has been an increase in the knowledge and understanding of the issue and that Belizeans are now realizing that it’s a problem and are willing to get involved in order to break the vicious cycle.