7 News Belize

Westrac Cares For The Kids
posted (June 24, 2020)
Westrac is providing school bags and covering the registration fees for students attending Queen Street Baptist and Unity Presbyterian Primary schools.

It's part of the company's COVID-time corporate responsibility campaign. Our news team attended the first of two handing over ceremonies this morning where we spoke to sales manager Julian Theissen who told us that education is the investment with the highest possible return.

Julian Theissen, Sales Manager, Westrac
"Westrac has each year an initiative and the criteria has been primarily supporting education, supporting young children in Belize, supporting athletes and in this time we felt that because of the COVID and we realized that with the economic downturn maybe there was a struggle for students to get the funding and the supplies to go to school and we didn't want this downturn to be something that left a permanent effect on children's education."

"There is a quote I'm not sure who said it but the best investment is in education. It's guaranteed a return. We feel it's a very worthy cause. We're trying to build a community and also hopefully support, or encourage should I say the private sector to get behind education because the whole country and the community obviously benefits from it. So it's a big help for them now but it's for everybody in the end."

Laverne Gillette, Principal, Queen Street Baptist Primary school
"First of all let me take this opportunity to express our gratitude to God for the blessing and the fact that he has chosen us and he has used the board of directors at Westrac to bless our school with this timely donation. When I heard of it I was very floored by it, you know it's a tremendous gesture. We know that these are unprecedented times, no one asked for this but I love my children very much, love my parents and I know I have hard-working parents and so this coming is a timely gift for them not only the registration being paid but having a schoolbag to start the new school year."

"It will definitely help us in terms of preparing our school compound so that we're a bit more COVID-19 ready in terms of people visiting and so on and keeping safe."

Cherisse Halsall:
"In this particular time of hardship how much of a barrier do you think tuition payments would have been to the students returning to school if this donation had not been made."

Laverne Gillette
"I think it would have been a significant barrier. It would have created more hardship on us in terms of locating money to alleviate and addressing some of the resources that we need, so I think it's significant."

A second handing over ceremony was held this afternoon at Unity Presbyterian school.

Home | Archives | Downloads/Podcasts | Advertise | Contact Us

7 News Belize