St. Agnes Anglican School Presents Play for Judging
Saint Agnes Anglican School in La Democracia serves the Mahogany Heights and La Democracia communities and is one of six rural primary schools taking part in a storytelling competition organized by the Wildlife Conservation Society. The purpose of this event is to highlight negative practices that are detrimental to the environment and corrective measures that can be taken to protect it. Saint Agnes is one of the buffer communities of the Maya Forest Corridor which spreads across Belize, Mexico and Guatemala, and is home to countless varieties of flora and fauna. Today, News Five visited the school to hear the message its students conveyed through their talents. Here’s Marion Ali with that report.
Marion Ali, Reporting
What you just saw was part of a skit that students of St Agnes Primary School in La Democracia presented today as part of a storytelling competition held by the Wildlife Conservation Society. The school is one of six that are, over the next few weeks, vying for title and prizes from the non-government organization. The young actors must convincingly show not only how human behaviours destroy, but also preserve the forests, particularly in areas that comprise the Maya Forest Corridor that stretches across this region.
Deseree Arzu
Deseree Arzu, Communications Coordinator, Wildlife Conservation Society Belize Program
“They need to present the problem and they also need to ensure at the end of the presentation that they’ll provide a solution to what that problem is. So whether it’s deforestation, whether it’s illegal hunting, they must at the end of the presentation decide what would be a solution to that problem.”
Communications Coordinator for WCS, Deseree Arzu says the overall objective of the competition is to get the children to learn best practices that protect the environment so they can in turn be influencers on the adults around them and the wider community.
Deseree Arzu
“A lot of times we teach by just standing up maybe in the classroom the teachers are you know, lecturing and so forth but in this case, we want them to do. We want them to research about the Maya Forest Corridor. Many times it’s the students, it’s the children that are able to grasp this information and take it back home because adults, many of them, are already set in their ways. They already have their set thinking, but if students can learn on their own and come up with ideas how they can better the environment, how they can better conservation, they are able to take this message to their parents who’ll be willing, more willing, to listen to that message.”
Carolee Arana-Petillo
Carolee Arana-Petillo, Teacher, St Agnes Anglican School, La Democracia
“The students came up with the title: Know the Facts Before You Tamper with the Wonders of the Mystical Forest. We have different characters: we have the jaguar, the tapir, the birds. Our first scene was where the hunter was hunting birds – a lot of birds for him to eat and then he got caught by the rangers, along with some illegal woodcutters. And then they were able to find out information that they didn’t know that they needed a permit, so, that was what the rangers, they explained to them.”
Carolee Arana-Petillo, a teacher at St Agnes Primary, told us that circumstances only provided a three-day window for the children to prepare the play, from script to execution, but they felt compelled to pull it off to spread the word on the importance of conservation and preservation of the eco-system. And Vice Principal of the school, Lisa Perez, explained that this type of event will not only serve to do just that, but will also expose the talent in the children they teach.
Carolee Arana-Petillo
“We try to instill in our students that we’re not just for local, but we also try to push them to be there globally, right? So we want to expose them in these types of events, and even though it’s just in our community, when we look at it now, it will further, it will go further because they are more exposed. 1People from other countries will want to see our animals, our forests, our special trees, but there will be nothing to see if we don’t take care of our ecosystem. And we – as we know, Belizeans need to be more responsible with our ecosystem.”
Marion Ali for News Five.
Prizes will be announced when the winning school is announced in the next few weeks.
