"Hope Ignited, Hands United, Vision Renewed: Belize at 42" - that's this year's September Celebrations theme. While we're still months away from September, the Ministry decided on an early competition, and in the end, there were two winners: Dahlia Moreno and Jose Avila. The Minister of Culture explained today that the winning theme was a combination of both their entries.
Francis Fonseca, Minister of Education & Culture
"Every year as you know we have a call for theme submissions for the national celebrations commission which I chair, puts out a public call. This year we received around 230 submissions. We have a selected theme selection committee comprised I think of about 6 members of the commission. The commission is a body of 25 people. So we have a theme selection committee, they go through them, vet them, screen them and then they bring to the entire commission, 20. They shortlist 20 of them and then the celebrations commission goes through those 20 and we have a process where we vote and go round by round until we eliminate and get down to the final theme. As has been the case in the past, we've not had one theme and so we've had to form a theme out of a blend of two and that's what we did again this year."
"We had 2 very strong submissions and we combined those 2 into one. One theme that everyone liked on the commission. So, that how we arrived at it."
"I think people always need hope, people are always looking for hope each of us in our individual lives as a country. The country has to be guided by hope and as I said in my remarks; we've been saying this for a very long time in Belize, if Belize is to reach its full potential, if we're going to be able to unlock this untold wealth and potential of Belize, we all have to work together. We have to be united in the vision for doing that, for achieving that objective."
"So, I think its a very fitting theme. Belize continues to face serious challenges, economic, social challenges and so I think people want hope, people want to be inspired by hope. We have to work together; our hands have to be united and of course we need a renewed sense of vision and spirit to move our country forward."
In total, 230 entries were submitted.
