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YCT Overview
Youth and Community Transformation Project (YCT) is a comprehensive social intervention, which responds to the challenges facing vulnerable groups, particularly youth at risk on the Southside of Belize City. Our neighbourhoods in South Belize City are challenged by increasing crime, inadequate social infrastructure and limited access to social services. The YCT Project seeks to present interventions to these challenges by supporting the expansion of and presenting our youth and their families access to needed social services, while developing and presenting new services to reduce social exclusion among these at risk young persons and their families who live in the areas of Collet, Lake Independence, Pickstock and Port Loyola divisions of Belize City.The YCT Project also provides access to programs to enhance literacy and adaptive life skills, support community security and improving the networking and sharing of best practices among participating agencies working in those communities. The Project will construct new and allow for rehabilitation of existing critical community infrastructure, including the provision of a new resource centre in the Lake Independence area and the renewal of the Wilton-Cumberbatch playing field.
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Latest News
Contact Us
110 Cemetery Road, Belize City, Belize (click to view map)
Telephone.: (501) 227-0840
E-mail: projectcoordinator.yct@humandev.gov.bz
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Youth RISE Overview
In 2017, the YCT project was expanded to the west and south of the country. The Youth Resilience and Inclusive Social Empowerment (Youth RISE) Project was launched in April 2017 to expand access to social services for approximately 3,500 children, youth, and families in the communities of Dangriga and San Ignacio/Santa Elena. Youth in these communities face many socioeconomic challenges, including the low attainment of educational qualifications, and increasing crime and violence.
Under the Youth RISE Project, young people who live in these communities will benefit from training that will focus on basic literacy and numeracy and employability skills; adaptive life skills; along with community programmes which focus on social skills.
Project Steering Committee
The Ministry of Human Development, Social Transformation and Poverty Alleviation is the executing agency [EA] for the project with strategic oversight and coordination provided by a project steering committee [PSC] comprised of representatives from the:
- Office of the Prime Minister (OPM)
- Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport (MOEYS)
- Ministry of Finance and Economic Development (Finance)
- Ministry of Finance and Economic Development (Economic Development)
- Ministry of Health (MOH), RESTORE Belize
- National Committee for Families and Children (NCFC)
- National Institute for Culture and History (NICH)
- National Sports Council (NSP).
Operational and administrative support for the YCT project is being provided by a project implementation unit [PIU] established within the executing agency.
Participating Agencies
The YCT Project is funded by the Caribbean Development Bank through a loan facility in addition to counterpart funding from the Government of Belize. The Project is managed by a Project Implementation Unit within the Ministry of Human Development, Social Transformation and Poverty Alleviation. The project will expand access and coverage of some of the existing social programmes and will also introduce new plot programmes which will be implemented and evaluated during the project implementation period. The project will partner with the following agencies for the implementation of the social transformation programmes:
Belize City
- Samuel Haynes Institute of Excellence
- Young Men’s Christian Association
- Community Rehabilitation Department
- Department of Youth Services
- Yabra Community Policing Unit
- RESTORE Belize
- National Sports Council
- National Institute of Culture and History
San Ignacio/Santa Elena
- Community Policing Unit
- Department of Youth Services
- Cornerstone Foundation
- St. Ignatius High School
Dangriga
- Delille Academy
- Progressive Organization of Women in Action (POWA)
- Belize Family Life Association (BFLA)
- Community Policing Unit
Project Programmes Include
- Basic Literacy and Numeracy
- Family Pre Literacy Rhymes that Bind Program – for parents and their children ages 0-4 years
- After School Literacy – for 5-8 year old in after-school programmes
- Computer Assisted Learning – for youth aged 14-19 years who have either dropped out of school or are vulnerable to dropping out
- Adaptive Life Skills
- Gang Resistance Education and Training(GREAT) – Schools/ Youth – for youth aged 11-15 years and their families
- Gang Resistance Education and Training (GREAT) – Families – for youth aged 11-15 years and their families
- The Self-Esteem, Conflict Resolution, Anger Management and Independent Living Skills (SCAIS) Programme – for youth ages 15 – 16 years.
- Community Support
- Conflict Mediators and Community Dialogues – training for youth peer mediators and community conflict mediators and the initiation of a community dialogue to engage communities in the demonstration of non-violent ways of resolving conflict.
- Sports and Expressive Arts – primarily for children and youth from ages 8 – 16 years and through community participation, to include youth from 16-24 years old.
- Community Infrastructure Support
- Rehabilitation of Wilton-Cumberbatch Field
- Fencing of Samuel Haynes Institute of Excellence
- Construction of the Lake Independence Resource Centre
- Project Implementation Support
- Furniture, equipment and learning materials
- Project Management
- Monitoring and Evaluation
“The YCT and YouthRise Projects are owned and under implementation by the Government of Belize via the Ministry of Human Development, Social Transformation & Poverty Alleviation and several public sector and social partners with funding from the Caribbean Development Bank and the Government of Belize”
