Before a packed audience of hundreds of children at the Bliss Center for the Performing Arts, an estimated 70 teachers from the Belize District area received certificates for completing phase 1 of an expressive arts program being taught at the Bliss in drama, dance and music, under a program organized and executed by the Ministry of Education.
Nurse, community worker and educator, Reverend Dr. Sadie G. Vernon, 90, passed away of complications due to pneumonia at her home in Belize City last Monday.
There are 14,000 Belizean children affected by HIV/AIDS, according to local estimates by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF). Some have the virus; others have parents or guardians infected. Most have no one to help them.
General Wood, on instructions from Washington, also supervised the election of delegates to a Cuban Constitutional Convention in September 1900. He instructed the delegates to include in their new constitution a provision “upon the relations to exist between that [the United States] government and the government of Cuba.” The Convention dutifully met and wrote a constitution modeled after that of the United States. But the delegates refused to incorporate any humiliating clauses in the basis law of their land regarding their association with a foreign power.
Even despite the publicity blitz targeted at young people through television and radio adverts and colorful posters, sexuality and HIV/AIDS are still taboo topics for some parents and teachers to discuss with young people. Still, more and more young people – ignorant of the facts of life – are falling victims to sexual exploitation and abuse, contracting HIV, and getting pregnant too early in life.
A lively crowd of about seventy persons, mostly teachers from schools in Cayo South and Belmopan, attended and vocalized their opinions about the Free Text Book Programme for Primary Schools at a public consultation hosted by Galen University at the George Price Center in Belmopan on Thursday, November 20.
Core members of the Belize Book Industry Association (BBIA) met in the lobby of the Bliss Institute for the Performing Arts on Thursday, November 20, 2008, with Ms. Nyasha Laing, a consultant at the Institute of Creative Arts, to discuss the way forward in the present dismal climate for book sellers, publishers, printers and writers here in Belize. The BBIA was formed last year to present a lobby to GoB for the relief of GST on the industry.
Amandala reporters, Aaron Humes and Rowland Parks, shared with the students some of their experiences and challenges as journalists. KREM DJ, Steve Anthony, allowed the enthusiastic students a brief on-air chit chat. The students were hosted and escorted by Amandala Assistant Editor, Adele Ramos.
The Belize National Library Service and Information System (BNLSIS) held its 9th annual Story Reading Contest on November 12, 2008 in Orange Walk Town under the theme Growing With Reading. The Story Reading Contest was held in memory of Ms. Beverly Fuller, a well known teacher at St. Ignatius Primary School who during her teaching career had a passion for helping children to learn how to read. She passed away three years ago.
Culture finds its most vivid expression in art. Therefore, it is fitting that one of Belize’s premier painters, Pen Cayetano, has made his annual voyage home from Ahrweiler, Germany to celebrate Garifuna Settlement Day - November 19 - with a rich display of 50 impressionistic, oil-on-canvas pieces that depict our uniquely Belizean experience and the ever-living traditions of the Garinagu.
The Bliss Center for the Performing Arts in Belize City was the venue for the debut screening of Punta Soul: a documentary by Belizean, Nyasha Laing, paying tribute to the Garinagu and their gift of music to the world. The 27-minute documentary features Garifuna music legends such as Paul Nabor, Andy Palacio, Aurelio Martinez, Chico Ramos, Pen Cayetano, Aziatic, and rising star - Deseree Diego, one of the women featured prominently on the Umalali Women’s Project.
Belize’s Ministry of Education on Monday formally announced that classes would be extended by one week, from December 12 to 19, 2008, in order to recover some of the time lost due to the extensive floods that caused the temporary shut down of schools across the country in October.
Cultural advocate Nelita Sambula releases Gregsy’s Adventures in Crooked Tree, and displays cultural paintings... In celebration of Belize’s rich cultural tradition, Nelita Sambula Doherty - poet, painter, author, and teacher, released a rich, native, folkloric tale, while displaying a wide range of her oil on canvas paintings on Friday, October 24.
