The Lions Quest was piloted in Belize some six years ago and to date the program has been introduced to over sixty primary and high schools country-wide. Over fifteen teachers took part in the second of seven workshops that will be held in Belize City. The two day event focused on life skills training provided by the Quality Assurance Development Services Unit. Bobby Lopez, the Director of the Lions Quest Program says that the workshop is contemporary in its approach.
Bobby Lopez, Country Director, Lions Quest
Bobby Lopez
"Everything they do during the two day workshop is actually what the teacher will do when they're in the class. In other words, it's not your conventional type where you sit behind each other in a desk, no this is set up in a horseshoe, you break up into group you discuss the topic and the same class reports to the whole class so it's very interactive and children get to share ideas and to understand the problems and discuss it among themselves and come up with solutions."
Andrea Polanco
"The things you're learning are definitely things that you can take back to Trinity Methodist and apply there?"
Miriam Gilharry
Miriam Gilharry, Teacher, Trinity Methodist School
"Yes ma'm, yes ma'm. So far we've been having whew, I mean it's overwhelming yuh know it's interesting. Yesterday was our first day and I learnt so much because even though I've been teaching for twenty four years they always tell yuh yuh need to learn more. And certain things like what we did a while ago, whereby it says that you should never tell the children like for role model you should never put them to do the negative role."
Bobby Lopez
"Whenever a teacher is trained, there's what's called a Teacher's curriculum package and it has everything the teacher needs to teach the program. A lot of the times in Life Skills teachers don't have a structure or the materials they need for whatever topic you might be looking at, kindness, respect, honestly, responsibility. So this covers all of that and but including there's a manual that the student gets called 'Challenges and Changes' and there's also manual for the parents called 'The Surprising Years' which helps parents to understand the changes their children are going through as they go into those adolescent years and so its meant, the program is really meant to bring the family back into the class, the community and the form of the Lions and wider community to get the village to raise the child."
Petie Palaza, San Pedro Lions Club
Petie Palaza
"We are participating because we want to bring it to more of the schools out in the outer islands. At the moment San Pedro has one school that has the Quest Program and we're trying to integrate more of the schools, so me as a Lions Member I'm trying to bring information back to the den so we can present it to the organization to see how we can further introduce it into the other schools."
If you like to know more about the Lions Quest Program you can contact the Lions Club in your district.
Channel 5