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And that wasn't the only reporting Kerwin Guild did for Channel 7 today.
He also went to Hattieville Seventh Day Adventist Primary School with Jomarie Lanza where the Wildlife Conservation Society was taking an interesting approach to environmental awareness.
It's a storytelling competition for schools along the Mayan Forest Corridor. Jomarie and Kerwin put this story together:
I am here outside of the Hattiville SDA primary school where the Standard 5 and 6 classes put on story telling performance today, competing against 5 other schools in the wildlife conservation society story telling competition 2023
"The Hunter's Challenge" was the name of their entry, written by 10 year old Xaisha Jacobs, and her teacher Charlotte Jacobs. Together with a group of talented students from both the standard 5 and 6 classes after a week's preparation, they put on a dramatization for the judges this afternoon, bringing to life the chilling tale of illegal hunting and poaching of jaguars within the Mayan forest corridor of Belize.
Xaisha Jacobs, Student
"So the first scene Is showing how they were learning about conservation in class. The next scene was about them preparing for the hunters challenged and one person was exited about the competition and the other one was concerned."
"The hunting scene was to show."
"How they hunted the jaguar and the impact of the hunting of the jaguars."
Their storytelling efforts exceeded the expectations of the judges who were impressed with the way they managed to put together a set, costumes, and other elements to tell the tale of the Hunters Challenge:
Charlotte Jacobs, Teacher, Hattieville SDA Primary School
"Well we feel um good and miss Keisha Dennison she's the standard 5 and 6 teacher here at hattivill SDA and we are very confident in the performance we played today, it was a combination of team effort rather and what you uh here on display was the result of the stand 5 and 6 students writing their own script, coming up with their own props setting their scenes doing their rehearsal and their dress rehearsal and presenting today for the story telling uh competition with the intention of course of taking the winning."
"I think it gave the students the opportunity to do more practical research, it gives them an insight into the importance of your community because all the students are from these hattivill area which is apart of the uh mayan corridor and so um relating it to their own surroundings and its impact, they would be able to um as it were appreciate the um need for conservation protection and sustainability in this um in this area."
The communications coordinator from the Wildlife Conservation Society told us that while this is the first year that they launched the competition, the purpose is to find a problem within the communities along the Mayan Forest corridor, and find a solution to these issues.
Desiree Arzu, Communications Coordinator, WCS
"So this is the first ever what we dub as the Maya forest corridor story telling competition and the idea is for us to get students from the buffering communities of the Maya Forest corridor to talk about some of the problems that are happening in the Maya Forest corridor but not just to highlight the problems but also present a solution to these problems. Our first school today is Hattieville Seventh day Adventist and they did a pretty good job talking about the plight of the jaguar and the fact that the community is hunting jaguars and what happens when that is done it creates more problems so we are judging on the criteria is you have to present the problem and you have to present the solution at the end of that problem and you have to mention the Maya Forest corridor. We want students to be involved in protection of our resources our terrestrial resources in this case. And it's not just adults if we can reach the children they can make a difference and so we thought that this competition would definitely be something that they can do so that they can learn because a lot of students learn by doing and by participating in this event they can learn a lot about what we do at WCS as well as protecting the Maya Forest corridor. We want to say thanks so much to the teachers at these schools for supporting this event, they were very willing and they made sure that the children practice over the past few weeks and they were prepared for today's presentation so we have five more schools that will be presenting and so at the end of the competition we will choose one school to be the MSC story champion for 2023 and hopefully this can be an annual event."
After all 6 schools are judged within the coming weeks, the winner will be announced
