Lynne Paradis paints a bleak picture of the conditions students learn under in Belize.
Many of the schools lack regular power, adequate sanitation facilities and even toilet paper. Students learn in hot, crowded classrooms, with few teachers who are adequately trained.
But just as startling are the kinds of changes that have been taking place thanks to Rotary Club funding and how much the Belizean government has come on board to help the Belize Literacy Program.
Working on the Rotary project, Paradis has been to the country to train teachers and educators on a number of occasions during the past few years. She spoke about the work on Monday at a meeting of the Downtown Rotary Club, held at the Red Deer Lodge.
Last summer, 24 educators from Alberta went to Belize to train 157 Belizean teachers. Each took back the knowledge they had learned to their own schools, training more than 4,700 more teachers and allowing them to help more than 117,000 children.
With a population of just over 300,000 people in Belize, it’s obvious how much impact the project can have.
“Belize is only about four Red Deers (in population size). So we can make a huge difference, but we’ve got to do it repeatedly,” Paradis said.
Paradis is the associate superintendent of learning services with the Red Deer Catholic Regional School Division and spends her time ensuring local teachers have the professional development they need.
On Monday, she encouraged Rotarians to volunteer to help not only with education, but also with planning, organizing and brokering of dollars for other projects.
She said many people go to Third World countries with a cool idea but without a co-ordinated effort, with government involvement, it only means a lot of half-finished projects.
“Really sometimes it’s not a good mark because half-finished projects bring a lot of hope and then a lot of hopelessness,” Paradis said.
She said the difference with this project is that the government is on board, as are the superintendents, principals and teachers. Rotary clubs in the country have also helped.
Paradis said Belize is a poor country and the dropout rate is high, particularly for boys. And as the dropout rate increases, so does the crime rate.
However, she said they have seen girls staying in school and research has shown when those girls become women and have their own children, they will share their knowledge with them, improving literacy rates in the next generation.
She said the teachers in the country are also gaining new skills that will give them new ways to engage students and keep them in school.
Paradis encouraged Central Albertans to get involved in brokering money, collecting it and building on it locally for projects in Belize.
sobrien@www.reddeeradvocate.com