Y.W.C.A. celebrates 50 years of service to women

After a week of official activities, today the Young Women’s Christian Association celebrated its fiftieth anniversary. The milestone marks five decades of hard work in the name of service to the Belizean community. The Y’s First Vice President and Public Relations Officer Beverly Brown says the journey has been all about empowering women both young and old.

Beverly Brown, First Vice President/P.R, YWCA
?We started under somebody?s bottom house and now fifty years later we have our own building. We have additional buildings, we have built our building brick by brick as we like to say, because all the blocks that made the buildings were built by the women and then we had contractors helping us to put it together. Then more recent times we had our fences done built by women, the blocks and the fences built by women. So we have come a long way. We have empowered our women and in all stratus of society you can find women who have passed through the Y.W.C.A. and we are very proud of that. From the Women?s Department to the tourism industry, small businesses, you have women who have passed through the Y. We have our students too who are doing pretty well, especially in the tourism industry.?

?The challenge is financial. We have talent, lots of talent. But sometimes we are inhibited because there is no finance to run some of the programmes. We have beautiful ideas that we would like to implement in our new programmes, but like I said there is no finance and those that we have, the programmes that we have we are going through really stiff financial constraints. We wish we could have a nice rich benefactor to support our programmes.?

The golden anniversary was celebrated with a motorcade through the streets of Belize City today. Other activities will include an open house and sports day on Saturday at the Y building at the corner of Freetown Road and St. Thomas Street, a Swim for Fun Day on Sunday, and a golden anniversary dance on April First.