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Club President Norman Leach with Gail Taylor This week our club heard from Gail Taylor, a member of the Rotary Club of Edmonton South (RCES) who came to tell us more about a program in Belize that she and their club are sponsors and mentors with. Gail is also the mother of one of our club members, Laura Brown, and the founder of Gail Taylor Music. Gail told us that Let Girls Learn was started in March of 2015 by Michelle Obama and also the Rotary Club of Belize in conjunction with the Love Foundation Belize and was formerly supported by funds from the US Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Aid program. The Love Foundation Belize is the philanthropic arm of Belize’s largest private multimedia company which manages funds for smaller donors and charitable organisations operating in Belize who do not have the capacity to manage them on their own. Let Girls Learn focuses on adolescent girls to teach life skills such as self esteem, confidence, motivation and leadership to help them to learn how to say no to abuse and help them to prevent unwanted pregnancies and thus enable them to stay in school longer. The program employs three local facilitators who give weekly classes after school to up to one hundred fifty five girls. This funding was recently cut by the US but these people still volunteer and are currently paying their own costs. They also have twenty-five Canadian women who volunteer as mentors to these girls by spending and one hour a month talking to two girls each. They also try to visit Belize once a year to meet and spend a day touring with the girls. The cost or facilitators for the yearly program is thirty four thousand Canadian dollars. The Love Foundation has donated thirteen thousand six hundred and Gail has raised another thirteen thousand one hundred and fifty through the RCES, and private donations from herself and other Rotarians. She is looking for more support from our club or privately from our members. She said that any extra funds raised would go towards supporting the girls to pay for school related expenses, to prevent them from falling into the sex trade to support their education, which is a common occurrence. We would like to thank Gail for coming to tell us about this very interesting project. |
