Friday, May 6, 2011

BELIZE NEEDS FOREIGN VOLUNTEERS TO BUILD PRIMARY SCHOOLS.










Belize has roughly 4000 children of primary school age out of a population of 313,000 people, who have no school to attend.

YOU DON´T HAVE TO BE A RELIGION, OR MISSIONARY TO BUILD AND DONATE A SCHOOL IN BELIZE. YOU CAN DO IT PRIVATELY. IT TAKES ABOUT $500,000 USA TO GET A PRIMARY SCHOOL GOING, INCLUDING BUYING THE LAND, CONSTRUCTING THE BUILDING AND HIRING TEACHERS AND MANAGING IT FOR THE REQUIRED 3 YEARS GOVERNMENT QUALIFICATION, TO GET THE TEACHERS SALARIES PAID FOR. IF YOU DESIRE TO HELP BELIZE, AM CONSIDERING ORGANIZING AN NGO TO DO THIS, WITH THE PROVISION OF THE DONATED CAPITAL. NOT REALLY MY THING, BUT I WAS A PRIMARY SCHOOL TEACHER IN BELIZE RURAL PARTS IN MY YOUTH AND SOMETIME PRINCIPAL. PREFER YOU DO IT AND ORGANIZE IT YOURSELF.

Primary school education is the biggest educational problem facing the small nation OF BELIZE. The government lacks the money to buy the land and build the schools. The government does though, pay 100% of privately owned primary schools, teachers salaries. What the nation needs is some charitable groups in more advanced countries to come in and build a primary school and manage it. There is always maintainance and oversite required. Some local and foreign entrepreneurs have actually built schools and are doing that, mostly to give themselves a job at government expense and those of their relatives, in the case of locals. Still the NATION OF BELIZE has a deep crying need for primary schools. Every year the population grows and schools with classrooms are quickly filled. It is a real challenge just to keep building classrooms to stay up with population growth. At the moment, the small country of Belize are short about 500 classrooms.if not more. Our local family have been planning to start a Charitable Trust to fund educational grants, but the actual building and maintaining and supervising a primary school has crossed our mind. Not that we want to do that, and our own resources are very limited, but the need is so great and Belize is so wonderful and given us so much joy and happiness.
What we have in Belize is an unrealized potential of human capital. The country seems rather backward to many foreign tourists, but compared to what it was 50 years ago, the standard of living has risen tremendously. Education has improved by leaps and bounds, particularly at the tertiary level. Unfortunately we still have officially a 50% poverty level and being tropical most people struggle to simply feed themselves, but as standard of living rises, the financial difficulties for people are growing as living conditions also improve. The nation of Belize has an official population of 313,000 people scattered over 6000 square miles. Some of it very rugged terrain. Roads are going in and people are moving into what was previously jungle lands and are now being developed. We have about 9 towns of modest small size and hundreds of villages and scattered small homesteads. There is actually a very highly motivated population and given the limited resources of a small population and a minimal government bureaucracy to maintain, Belize is doing much better than some of our neighboring Central American countries, or Caribbean island countries. Considering the modest tax base of a raw commodity exporting small nation, we do very well for the small tax base available. Living here is to live in paradise though. Much better than in European, or North American countries, I think. If you like rural and warm weather, it is perfect.

1 comment:

Tershia said...

When is Belize going to become self-sufficient instead of expecting hand-outs from"Foreigners"? Until the political corruption and cronyism stops, Belize will not progress.