This morning UNICEF handed out 8 checks amounting to over $14,000 to 8 youth organizations. It's part of UNICEF's support for the "Xchange" program that began back in March of 2005. The money is for youth led initiatives which will look at crime and violence prevention, teenage pregnancy, drug abuse, and HIV and Aids. UNICEF representative Rana Flowers explains that it's a new approach that the funding agency is taking to address age-old problems.
Rana Flowers, UNICEF Country Representative
"To the proposals which were judged against three criteria as meeting the objectives that we have set which are projects that reach adolescents, that reach excluded populations, that reach boys and girls equally, and that engage their community, that have involvement in some cases the police and in some cases private business who have been engaged to do some extra apprentice work etc. And so the amount given depends on the budget, the realistic budget, that the young people develop themselves.
It is an absolutely new approach, it is really innovative for an organization like UNICEF to attempt something like this but you know we've watched over the last year the Xchange movement grow in Belize. It is a positive movement for change. It is young people themselves saying zero tolerance to violence, no more sexual abuse of our young people, and it is saying we don't want crime and violence in our streets, we want to prevent and protect ourselves from HIV, stop teenage pregnancy etc.
I feel that it was more than time that we said to them, 'okay come with a proposal, you work a realistic budget, and you will have our support to play that out in your communities. We're not going to come in there and do it for you, this is up to you to play it. This is unusual, I am not saying it hasn't been done in any country but its certainly unusual in this part of the world."
The grant programs will be managed through the Youth Enhancement Services that will keep progress reports. Two programs were chosen for each district with the exception of the Toledo District where two projects were merged into one.
