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Sahar Vasquez reporting
In the past, the Youth Innovation challenge has presented high school students with the task of solving massive problems like crime and youth unemployment. The students always seem to come up with ingenious ideas and solutions, making it hard for judges to even pick a winner and this year was no different. This time around the brilliant young minds had come up with a way to demonstrate how knowing to read and write can assist a person in having financial security down the road.

Dr Carol Babb, Deputy Cheif Education Officer
"This year because we have launched literacy as a national priority decided to link literacy and financial literacy because when our students can read and write well they can get a good job but if they cant manage their resources they will turn out to be failures so we see the two linked very closely and we want the students to demonstrate to us how literacy can lead to financial security."

Now, this seems like a tough task right? But we spoke to a few students about their solutions and it is safe to say by the end of it all they left us speechless.

Nathan Feinstein, 4th Form- BHS
"It is an initiative that will allow a required reading list that children can sign up for and I they complete reading list and provide evidence that has completed the list they may get subsidies of their tuition."

Sahar Vasquez, reporter
"How did you guys come up with this idea?"

Nathan Feinstein, 4th Form- BHS
"A lot of brainstorming and we decided that we needed some sort of motivation for people to read and we thought that this kind of motivation can come from home because parents would be wanting them to do it would work well."

Keenan Hyde, 2nd Form - SJC
"We are mostly focusing on how to reach and make everyone interact with our program. SO what we did our main focus was with the community and working online so that not only students in Belize but all the other districts could be involved inside what we have built so we built a Facebook page which will have competition and we have made it more easier and not inconvenient to anyone's busy schedule. That will give them a chance for everyone to be involved. Also, our facebook page is the first stage the second stage is to build an innovative app. This where the entrepreneurship aspect to the project comes along because what we are trying to do is build a virtual reality on the app itself as a form of simulation for real-life scenarios with business decisions, taxes, and different billings so you will be able to manage the money inside the app itself."

Daniella Novelo, 2nd Form- Ocean Academy
"We have developed an official live linking website. We are linking all the hottest and newest apps and websites to increase literacy. Financial literacy and social literacy. Later we will create this functioning app so far this website is just to enhance because we know all the younger students are addicted to their technology, their phones, tablets, devices, they love it so we want to speak to them through their language."

And according to Dr Babb, this competition is a major confidence booster to these young geniuses.

Dr Carol Babb, Deputy Cheif Education Officer
"What we have seen over the years is that students have developed self-esteem, they have become very confident, yesterday I saw a dry run of what they will present today and I was beaming with happiness, pride, and joy that we see our young people really stepping out. They are not afraid to say how they feel about these topics. Over the five years, I have seen confidence building students are not afraid to get up and do oral presentations."

So while we tend to doubt the youth, it seems they may hold the answers to many confounding problems.

At the end of it, all San Pedro High School came out with the win. They were each rewarded $750, a tablet, and their school received a printer. Edward P. Yorke placed second and received $500 each along with a tablet and printer. 3rd place was a tie between Ocean Academy and Belize High School who both received $250 savings account a tablet and printer. The other five participating school received a $1,000 scholarship which they will award to a deserving student.