The year 2020 is just around the corner. No doubt we’re going to hear a lot of 20/20 jokes this week! But in a remarkable effort of restraint (for me), I’ll avoid the easy joke. Instead, I want to share the thoughts of my friend and colleague Roger Dermody.
If you read my blog you know the work of PathLight is dear to my heart. And as much as I wanted to be, I wasn’t the right guy to lead PathLight going forward. The opportunity to bring Roger onto the team has been heaven-sent. That’s why it’s an honor to share some of his thoughts about where PathLight is today.
By the way, PathLight is currently in the midst of a $50k matching gift campaign, and I really hope you can help. Any amount — large or small — is much appreciated. Click here for more information.
Here is the update Roger shared.
PathLight 2020
Why Belize? It’s the question we at PathLight are most often asked. So let me set the scene for you.
School in Belize is compulsory and “free” until age 12. After that, it’s neither compulsory nor affordable to many Belizeans.
In fact, 50% of Belizean children neither attend nor complete High School.
Thus their options are limited to things like subsistence farming, or day labor, which typically only pays about $6 a day.
Over 40% of Belizeans live in poverty – defined by “a level below which an individual lacks the wherewithal to live a meaningful existence.”
And sadly, Belize is one of only 13 countries in the world where daily more people enter extreme poverty than escape it. And of those 13 countries, Belize is by far the closest to the United States.
Without an education, kids face a very uncertain future. They are destined to repeat an unending cycle of generational poverty. This results in all the challenges you’d expect for youth: gangs, crime, teenage pregnancy. In fact, Belize has the highest rate of adolescent pregnancy in the entire Caribbean region.
Remarkably, despite all these challenges, Belize is entirely overlooked by the worlds major charities.
PathLight steps into Belize with a heart to serve, and 2019 was a remarkable year. Here are just a few of the things accomplished.
A key part of PathLight’s strategy is to have local leaders involved in every aspect of our work. Toward this, we signed a historic Memorandum of Agreement with the Ministry of Education. This established PathLight as an officially recognized key strategic partner helping the Ministry achieve it’s educational goals for Belize.
PathLight also promoted Nilda Muschamp to become our first Belizean Director of Operations (DoO), which clearly demonstrated real growth opportunity to our staff, and has proven to be the absolute right move.
In addition, PathLight has formed several new Strategic Connections with the Belizean Embassy in Washington DC, the Organization of American States (OAS), the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), Restore Belize, and the Department of Youth Services (DYS).
One of PathLight’s core programs is the Teacher Training Program (TTP). TTP works to change the entire education system by improving the classroom teachers. PathLight reached almost one in four teachers in the country, positively affected the student outcomes – particularly among the most at-risk and least served communities in Belize – of over 30,000 students by giving teachers stronger classroom skills.
Toward this goal and collaboration with the Ministry of Education, we celebrated the opening of our four new Teacher Resource Centers, giving us a physical presence in all six Districts.
We also launched the Beacon program, which allows a donor to sponsor an entire classroom and provide the teacher ongoing training.
Plus we are excited to say we promoted Consuelo Godfrey to the Director of TTP. To help Consuelo we were able to hire two excellent new Associate Teacher Trainers.
Another core program of PathLight is our Sponsorship+ Program. In August we celebrated the awarding of 62 new scholarships, bringing us to 167 students who each receive over 400 hours annually of after school programming, tutoring, character formation, discipleship, leadership development, and job readiness training.
PathLight identifies children who have the greatest potential for academic success, yet the least economic means to realize their dreams. And we do more than just pay for their education. We want to see them flourish academically, personally, and spiritually.
To make the Sponsorship+ Program even more impactful, we opened our new Belize City office in July, giving us three times the amount of space within walking distance of the High Schools the PathLight students attend.
The third key program for PathLight is Community Partners, which works with local communities to upgrade classrooms, playgrounds, and communities. Bryan and Tono, our Community Partners team, continued to coordinate a wide range of projects.
So where do we go in 2020?
Most importantly, we will continue to deliver on our core mission – empowering children in Belize to receive a quality education, break free from poverty, and reach their God-given potential.
We aim for an increase in our total number of students under full sponsorship from 167 to 200 – in sync with our ten year plan.
We aim to open one additional full-service PathLight Center in the third largest city in Belize, thus allowing PathLight to serve over 500 additional teachers representing approximately 15,000 more students, and enroll 25 more students in the Sponsorship+ program.
We aim to grow the Beacon program to 250 classrooms.
We aim to further engage the US Belizean diaspora in partnership with the Belizean Ambassador to the US and the Consular offices.
We aim to strengthen our relationship with new strategic partners from the Organization of American States (OAS), and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) for country-wide expansion of PathLight services.
We aim to hire a new Executive Director who will oversee all operations as well as engage with the business, government, church, and community organizations in Belize.
We aim to hire a USA based Community Partners Director so we can reach even more people who wish to serve the people of Belize.
So yes, we are aiming for a lot in 2020, and continuing to serve the students, teachers, and communities of Belize.
I hope you will consider helping PathLight this year as we think about next year! And to add a little incentive, a friend of PathLight has provided a $50k matching gift this month. I hope you can help. You can do so here. Thank you!