It has been nearly six months since we undertook the Training of Faciiltators with a group of exceptional youth in Belize. Since then, the young faciltators have been making waves across the country reaching over 1000 youth already. Recently, President of the Caribbean Dr William Warren Smith visited Belize and saw the youth in action.
We are incredibly excited to announce that youth in Belize are working incredibly hard to reach thousands of young people since their training Belize in June this year. Recently, President of the Caribbean Development Bank Dr William Warren Smith visited Belize to understand and acquire a direct exposure to the investment made by the Caribbean Development Bank in Belize. More specifically, he visited the youth who were trained by YOURS back in June to see their workshops in action. The project that took place earlier this year is a USD $157,000 Youth and Road Safety Capacity Building Project jointly funded by the Caribbean Development Bank (CDB) and the Government of Belize (GOBZ).
Representative of the Youth Facilitators in Belize, Mr Eric Sanchez presents certificates of appreciation to the Government of Belize.
The project was executed by the Ministry of Finance and Economic Development, Road Safety Unit and the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports. The road safety capacity building programme for teens and young adults will be facilitated by Youth For Road Safety, an international youth-led and youth- oriented, not-for-profit, non-governmental organisation focused on youth and road safety.
The programme utilised a train-the-trainer approach, while incorporating peer education and active learning. It is expected that the project will also enhance the benefits to be realised from the ongoing USD8.844 million CDB and GOBZ funded Road Safety Project launched in March 2013.
President of CDB Dr William Warren Smith takes a picture after the youth and road safety workshop.
“The objective is to reduce fatalities on the roads so that a very important component of that exercise is building awareness. What today is all about is to get an idea of the very important role that the young people of Belize are playing in trying to build that awareness. There are number of other such developments that are part and parcel of the project, so it’s an infrastructure project combine with a very critical awareness component.” Dr William Warren Smith
It was clear that President Smith was incredibly impressed with the workshop run by the youth facilitators and commended their energy and commitment to the cause. The President of CDB saw the youths in action implementing the methodology acquired through YOURS. He seems very hopeful that the peer to peer support will spread good road safety practices and will contribute to the behavioural change in the long term. The facilitators themselves thought it went excellent! Shantell Jacobs believed that the students were of a high quality and were very receptive of the techniques imparted. She also believed that they will share knowledge and skills obtained to their friends and family members.
Dr Smith takes a picture with CDB Staff and Belize Youth Road Safety Facilitators (in yellow tshirts).
The facilitators were trained to run these road safety workshops through YOURS’ Capacity Development Programme. The youth continue to reach young people and have already reached over 50% of their proposed target of 2,000 Belizean youth. In the coming months, the YOURS team will return to Belize to quality-check the trainings as well as ‘top-up’ the knowledge of the youth on road safety knowledge.