photoTeachers for a Better Belize
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Who We Are

Purpose and Goals

Teachers for a Better Belize (TFABB) is a partnership of educators from North America and Belize who volunteer their time to improve the training of teachers and the education of children in Belize’s Toledo district.
Toledo is the poorest and least developed region of Belize. Teachers there have little or no formal training in education; indeed, over half of the teachers have no schooling beyond high school. They face onerous conditions, including severely overcrowded classrooms and limited supplies. Over 40 percent of Toledo's children do not finish primary school, and thus have little chance of escaping poverty.

TFABB's goal is to help equip Toledo's primary-school teachers and principals with the training, supplies, and facilities they need to help their students achieve educational, and ultimately economic, success. TFABB hopes its efforts will help break the cycle of poverty and dependency that plagues Toledo's villages by empowering teachers there to increase the number of children who finish elementary school, pass the national high school entrance exam, attend high school, and achieve long-term economic success. Inherent in our process of strengthening teaching abilities is a continuing dialogue with the educators and people of the region about how our efforts can best benefit Toledo's students.


History

our growthKathie Dolan (a primary-school teacher for 16 years) and Anne Frahn (an international development professional, with expertise in education issues) served as volunteer teachers in Belize’s Toledo region during 1996. At the suggestion of several Belizean educators, they co-founded TFABB in early 1997 along with Jennifer Johnson (a primary-school teacher for 18 years), and began a long-standing partnership with Belizean Principal Carmelo Juarez of Big Falls village in Toledo to organize the annual teacher-training workshops. In 2000, Belize’s Permanent Secretary of Education visited the workshop and proclaimed it a model for the other five regions of Belize. In 2001, Toledo’s Regional Education Council and local Ministry of Education officials began working with TFABB’s U.S. board members to coordinate the workshop and to initiate related projects, and made the workshop mandatory for all primary-school teachers in the region. TFABB is the only nonprofit organization working to improve teaching abilities in Toledo, filling a crucial training need that the Belizean government cannot yet fully meet.

In 2001-2006, nearly all of Toledo’s primary teachers attended the annual TFABB workshop, more than a ten-fold increase since the first workshop in 1997 when 20 teachers attended. TFABB’s book and supply donations to Toledo’s schools have gone from $750 in 1997 to more than $9,200 in 2006. In 2003, TFABB expanded its efforts to include school-related construction, such as libraries. In 2005, we began to train Toledo’s principals in leadership and management skills.

(See Prior Program Results)


Board Members

Additional Members of North American Planning Team

Belizean Sub-committee



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