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And in much lighter news...
The Journey to Freedom Program made possible through the Restore Ministry in Belize, has made its way to Sadie Vernon Technical High School where more than a dozen students spent the last few weeks engaging in programs teaching them how to deal with the complexities and traumas of life.
Jomarie Lanza attended the graduation ceremony for those who completed the program and here's what she learned.
Today 21 students graduated from the Journey to Freedom Spiritual program at Sadie Vernon highschool. The program was modeled with a purpose to guide students on how to heal the mind, body and spirit through the use of spiritual practices, such as praying and devotion. Former inmate now turned facilitator, Kenroy Young told us today that he first got to learn about the program when he was on remand at the Belize central prison.
Kenroy Young, Journey To Freedom Facilitator
"The Journey to freedom is a course outline that you fall into sometimes in life we fall into hardships we make mistakes. We have let downs and sometimes we find ourselves in situations that are just tough and a man by the name of Scott Real who is the founder of the journey to freedom restore ministries group in the US he started this group as a small group session to bring healing and hope into lives of people who know that there are areas in their lives that needed change."
"It's a 8 week curriculum and each week has a topic so we cover topics such as grief, hitting out problems head on hope guilt and we interact with the young people by having them hear out stories and life experiences and listening to theirs and having them apply it into the curriculum lessons that they have to use tools to help them get through their daily lives."
The 8 week course has truly transformed the minds and lives of the participating students at Sadie Vernon High. Their counselor and one of the students told us more about the impact the program had on the participants.
Deadra Bennett, Counselor Sadie Vernon High School
"The journey to freedom program I consider it to be an empowerment program and I have noticed that since my students have been a part of this program they have been using a lot of the techniques that have been administered within the programs so for example they are more in tuned with their feelings and they also turn more to God."
Rhean Wade, Program graduate
"I think that the program will it's a good program I think that it will help all the youths at the school I think it will help them to better themselves and help them with their behavior at school and I feel like in the future they could help other kids at the school as well some of the topics they taught us were how to deal with death how to deal with violence and stuff like that.".
