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Police Open Drop-In Center in Hattieville
posted (February 16, 2010)

It’s a Police initiative called a Drop In Center – a place where kids from a given neighborhood can “drop in” and do their homework, surf the web, even get a meal. The Police Department has had success with the Drop-in Center in the Yabra area and now they’ve extended that idea to Hattieville. With assistance from the United Nations Population Fund the Hattieville Community and Youth friendly enter was opened today. The modest space is above the village police station and Douglas Hyde who spearheaded the effort in Yabra says from this small space will come big changes.

Douglas Hyde, Youth Coordinator
“It is that one stop place where a young person comes for information and also in terms of opportunity. So maybe it is that place where a young person says I just want to find a job, I just want to find out where I can get some information or where can I go to get certain information or services. So the drop in center is that place where a person from the community or a young person can go and get that information, or receive that service, or do research or find out the information that he or she needs.

When you create the drop-in center with activities and programs that focus on young people and having young people themselves running these things, you have more young people accessing the information and also accessing the program. So we’ve seen where that success has been very important, we’ve seen where it has literally showed where young people want to be a part of the programs and activities that are offered through it.”

Allen Whylie, CEO – Ministry of National Security
“Whilst the center will be opened from 10 in the morning to 8 pm Mondays to Saturdays, there will be two police officers assigned along with two civilian volunteers. So throughout the day and the evening there should be one police and one civilian who will be working. We having had time to analyze the drop-in center in Yabra, we know some of the difficulties we had faced and we also know the success and benefits of that program. We are interested to moving that area into further areas of Belize City, especially in the Mahogany Street area and so on.”

The police are looking for a suitable piece of land in the Mahogany Street Area.

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