UNICEF Belize

The quiet shuffle of papers is interrupted by the deep bluesy voice of Roy Bowen as his song trails through the office halls with a round of Lola. My office-mates who sit with me in the conference room late one Friday evening smile and chuckle at our current situation. UNICEF set up a meeting entitled “Boys and Education: The Unspoken Gender Dimension” and it was currently in full swing. But, as events go, preparation crunch time had brought us to this curious moment. We had just returned from the opening reception and dinner ceremony, which kick-started the weekend conference and we still had last minute work to prepare for the next days’ discussions.
Eyes glazed and minds slowly ticking, we prepared folders for the participants of the conference glancing out at the darkened Belizean sky. The assembly line was in steady swing. Papers were rhythmically punched, three ring binders clicked, stacks lined and put into place. As we moved, serenaded by round two of Roy’s disembodied voice, quiet Creole conversation ensued. Here were dedicated workers.
But, sometimes I think that they forget what they do – my UNICEF friends. I remember Rana Flowers, the director, once asking me as she bustled by my desk one day “Why am I doing this, Ashley, remind me?” I smiled and quickly responded, half-jokingly, “It’s for the children…” She laughed, sighed and then headed back to her office.
It’s easy to forget though. The connection of ends and means gets lost in the stress and the rush. Working with UNICEF has shown me more than I expected. Not only how a UN agency works in a developing country, but how much a struggle it can be to prove your country needs help. UNICEF Belize is teetering on the edge of existence. When a country reaches a certain status, UNICEF isn’t needed anymore.
Belize statistically has decent national indicators, but socially – on a ground level – it’s obvious Belize needs as much help as they can get. So for UNICEF it comes down to proving the situation is dire in order to survive as an organization. That is where the disconnection settles in. At a UN government level the proof must not come in sad gripping stories and pictures of barefoot round bellied children, but in graphs and numbers.
Liquefying funds. Something I’ve become familiar with sitting in the conference room with the programme staff as they discuss the various state of UNICEF’s money; Where it’s going, where it came from, but most of all, how to get rid of it. Yes, Rid of It. That surprised me when I heard it tossed into a conversation about getting potable water and improved sanitation to the villages of Belize. There is a need to use up all available funds in order to PROVE you need them – or else the next year you will see less, and maybe be out of a job.
Compared to other counties that have UNICEF, the Belize situation seems peachy – small and peaceful, without war or extreme famine. So the staff at UNICEF must struggle daily to prove the children in Belize need assistance. They must speak louder than the statistics. It is difficult to do so with information like infant mortality rates, which per 1,000 births in Belize is 24, and in a country like Guyana is 48. Taking this into consideration it isn’t surprising that a country like Belize gets pushed into the background.
This is one of the reasons the staff gets caught up in money and management. But seeing is believing, and field visits seem to knock the sense back into their heads. Visiting a village in the Cayo District and observing children getting drinking and washing water out of rusty broken sinks is an image that can stick with you for a while – hopefully all the way back to the office. It is easy to sit and tick off “yes” or “no” on a chart asking what UNICEF Belize accomplished that year. But look deeper into the questions and the humanity creeps back into the room.
During the “Boys and Education: The Unspoken Gender Dimension” conference I saw people coming together on behalf of humanity. The bottom line of this successful conference was that there is an infringement upon the rights of children to education. The denying of rights is revealed in insufficient access, poor treatment in schools, high rates of violence, dilapidated condition of schools, and lack of trained teachers. The holes are wide, gaping and often obvious. Below the surface, the boys struggle. It has been proven that boys struggle in the system a little more than girls. There are many reasons for this, written in countless books and articles and is a trend that has been discussed for years. Yet, the problems for both genders to obtain an education that is complete and useful are intertwined, so the main point is that the school systems are lacking. Both boys and girls need better education, and that means multiple things. It means improved after school programs, more parent involvement, more opportunities to continue education, and less encounters with drugs and violence on the walk to and from school, to name a few.
Hearing people speak passionately about this issue was refreshing. I got to meet the people I had only researched. I also got to see the development of new innovative ideas to address the problem from all angles. Meeting such as these are the types of things that bring purpose back into the job. There is an undeniable power to watching a video of a young boy in Belize talking about how he dropped out because it was impossible for him to afford education at age 14 or listening to an 11 year old speak about how he was expelled for bad behaviour and now thinks it’s too late to continue his education. These are the things that put fuel back into the minds of UNICEF and other attendees of the conference. It is a great scene to witness. Those moments are to be treasured – because it won’t be long till we are back in the conference room liquefying funds and ticking off questions with simple answers.
With realization, complications grow – there is suddenly yet another identified problem, waiting to be fixed. UNICEF continues to teeter on the edge of existence and more issues continue to pile on, adding to the imbalance. But that is what is beautiful about an organization like UNICEF. There is a constant discovery. A new catalyst hit each week. A constant refreshing remembrance of why you choose the path. As deep as a person can get buried in papers and deadlines, any accomplishment changes a child’s life for the better. And that is something to be proud of.