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You see them in our schools and communities working with students and partnering with government entities. The Peace Corps has been in Belize for the past 62 years volunteering, and today in Belmopan the organization hosted its Peace Corps Service Summit. Their director told us more:

Nadine Rogers, US Peace Corps Country Director
"So we've called it our service summit and the key audience was our volunteers and the partners that we work with here in country we saw it as a unique opportunity to bring together everyone who's got a stake in the work we do and to put some fuel into those folks feed them with good keynotes opportunities to have workshops and talk about current issues and just really kind of fuel up this partnership network."

"The mission of the US Peace Corps in world peace and friendship it's quite easy actually. Easy to say not so easy to do. We've been in over 60 countries for over 60 years we have actually been in Belize for 62 years and we bring people we don't bring money we don't bring things we bring human beings and we put them in communities they stay for up to 27 months they learn the language they learn the food and they understand what the communities needs are and then they try to be a technical resource for communities so we do grass roots development."

So far, 2,000 peace corps volunteers have passed through Belize, and these 45 active members got a chance to learn more about the country by partaking in discussions led by key Belizean representative.

Nadine Rogers, US Peace Corps Country Director
"So this afternoon we will have two sessions of workshops; each session three workshops will run concurrently. So volunteers and our counterparts will have an opportunity to attend two workshops this afternoon one in each session and we've got some great leaders. Minister Habet is going to lead a conversation on climate change, Senator Coye is going to lead a conversation on transformative partnerships. Deborah Seawell from Love foundation is going to talk about grassroots ownership and inclusivity so there are just all kinds of things people are going to talk about our partners from UNICEF are going to talk about generational impact so it's just an awesome set of conversations and the volunteers will break up so each group might have 20 people in it at a time but it will be an opportunity for digging deeper into some of the themes that got raised today."

And aside from today's presentations we learned more about the work of the Peace Corps from the Program manager for Youth Empowered By Sports Project. She told us more about how they have partnered with the Ministry Of Education and the National Sports Council to make this initiative possible.

Lynelle Williams, Program Manager Peace Corps Belize
"So for the Ministry Of Youth Development And Transport one of the things that they had expressed to us is the desire to create a whole athlete so not just athletic skills but also life skills and so we are trying as much as possible with our yes project to implement sports clubs at schools that incorporate life skills so things that young athletes need so like team work conflict resolution being leaders, leadership. We support the staff at primary school that they can enter the national sports council tournaments and perform not only as great athletes but children of character. On the ministry of education side they have a physical education Curriculum that our sports clubs do support in terms of teaching skills but also supporting those schools in entering the primary school tournaments."