The Belize Council for the Visually Impaired 16th annual summer camp came to an end today. Over 30 students who attended the camp had an opportunity to showcase what they have done over the past 2 weeks. It was all smiles from the children and 7news got to capture it.
Carla Musa - Communications Officer - BCVI
"Today we are having our summer camp open day and we had a little AGM so that everyone can be up to date on what we've been doing for the past year. We have all our kids here from throughout the country, so we have about 35 children who are in our summer camp area right now and what we wanted to do was to let everyone who have heard about BCVI - everyone who provided support to make the camp possible - we wanted to invite them in to be able to see what they've actually made possible whether it's through the artwork, through the computer programs and the computer classes or through their brail and reading and writing. Everyone is just mingling right now and getting to meet the kids."
"This year summer camp like I said has 35 children and we split the groups because it was a bigger group that we had last year. We had about 80 people total whether it was children, guardians and staff members - we have half of the group at the Lion's Den at Princess Margaret Drive and the other half over at Stella Maris. They were split up by age. We were able to provide more individualize support per group, so we did braille typewriting classes, reading classes, math, art, computers and we had a lot of field trips as well."
"Every year every student in Belize is going to enter a new class in August/September so we want to make sure for the children in our program that they are asses and that BCVI - because it's our responsibility to get them exactly where they need to be that we follow through on that. So each child has an individualize education plan and based on what their needs are we provide that training in these two weeks at camp."
"With the fundraising that we've done over the past 6 months, we are actually able to have a new year camp in January and an Easter camp next year March or April so that at each semester or each term we are able to bring them back up to date with where they need to be."
The BCVI also held a short Annual General Meeting today to discuss their finances. So far they have raised 70 thousand dollars out of the 100 thousand they had hoped to raise. If you'd like to assist you can contact BCVI at 636 -1130. The money will also be used for other camps including a New Year's Camp and an Easter Camp.
