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This morning 7News was there speaking with the Minister of State and C.E.O in Belize's Ministry of Education and Culture to get the highlights of the Summit which marked the end of Belize's SICA presidency.

It's been two days of Meetings for the Central American ministers of education and culture, two days in which connectivity and collaboration in both areas have been at the heart of the discussions.

And this morning as the Ministry in attendance discussed various regional acts for both spaces they were joined by a regional official whose support will be essential to their work.

Louis Zabaneh, Minister Of State, Minster of Ed, Cul, Sci, Tech.
"So yesterday the Ministers of education met in the morning and the Ministers of Culture in the afternoon and today we are having the joint Ministers of education and culture, we also have a unique opportunity where the Secretary General of SICA, the overall organization is here with us and this is the first time this has occurred and it is great because he has placed the overall development of the region in terms of how education and culture contribute to that objective. My contributions this morning was to make it clear that if we don't have a strong education system we would not be able to achieve those more lofty goals."

"We recognize that throughout out region we have vulnerable children so we have to look at things like feeding programs so that when the children are in school they are able to be productive so that is another part of what we are working on."

"We want the region to be integrated and to experience more economic growth and development so a better quality of life for everybody but that means that we have to invest in our children and in our people, we have to see each person as an individual and it is through that investment in a person that then those other things that we want to achieve can be achieved because if we don't have people who are competent, who are able to demonstrate mastery of certain skills then we would not, we would just have those on paper and we would not be able to achieve them. So I think that went over very well with the Ministers of education and culture this morning."

And Much like the Minister of State the C.E.O. in the Ministry of Education seemed very optimistic about the educational and cultural feats that can be accomplished with all 8 countries working in tandem and learning from each others strengths.

Dian Maheia, C.E.O. Ministry of Education
"What is important is that what we are understanding are areas of connectivity, we are seeing ways where as a region we can learn from one another, we can support one another and it's really been beneficial I mean Belize is a unique place as a part of Central America, as a part of the Caribbean. So you can think of SICA as being the equivalent of CARICOM but for Central America and what we are seeing is that when we discuss issues like curriculum reform, we are not the only country who is grappling with some of these matters who is trying to figure out okay what do we do, how do we do this the conversation that happened just now actually touched on the same thing again, just as a conversation that across the region we need to develop competencies in our students. We want all our students to be effective with good national citizens, how do we do that well we have to do that through sometimes changing the way that we are doing things so Belize is not unique in the challenges that we face conversations like this and regional efforts like this help us to understand these things and then we figure out how can we help one another."

And so as the SECT-SICA presidency pro-tem was passed from Belize to El Salvador the region is focused not just on growing knowledge bases but instead making sure that those knowledge bases are converted into real, modern and marketable skills.