A group called the Del Agua String Quartet is in Belize this week for a pair of performances. But the trip is really about teaching and inspiring a love of the violin. Daniela Gongora and Alyssa Berbey are Belizean women who've become accomplished professional string musicians in the United States.They are returning home with two of their teachers to provide instruction in some master classes right back at the place where it all started - the Palotti music program.
Daniela Gongora told us more:
Daniela Gongora
"Today we are having master classes with students of the Pallotti school of music. The students get an opportunity to work with a professor of music from the University of Rhode Island. We tend to enjoy having other professionals give their opinion and their input on what ever the student is working on."
Jules Vasquez
"When you were in that room in the position of those kids, did that feedback from these international masters, did that inseminate in your mind that you could do this for a living."
Daniela Gongora
"Well as a child, yes. Anything is possible right. I think that definitely as a child that did come into my mind and then later on as you get older, I was like 'what was I thinking' and opportunities happen and open some doors and I was able to do that I am actually living that little dream that I had."
Jules Vasquez
"Now, you are now a professional string musician - is that the term? - in the United States."
Daniela Gongora
"Yes."
Jules Vasquez
"So you are paid to play?"
Daniela Gongora
"Paid to play, paid to teach and yes that's what I do for a living."
The string quartet performs on Thursday night at 7:30 at the Mexican institute in Belize City and on Friday at the George price center in Belmopan.
Carlos Calls On Feeding Program
As we told you at the top of the newscast, security minister Carlos Perdomo could be the first to be moved in a cabinet shuffle. But, he's not out the door, and today he visited one of the most hopeful programmes that the police department has.
It's the Yabra Community Feeding programme which feeds neighborhood schoolchildren on Tuesday Wednesday and Thursday. It's a model programme and it may enable the government to qualify for a special IDB package of funding.
Hon. Carlos Perdomo, Minister of National Security
"What we are trying to do with the IDB is to expand programme like this. This is not really a new programme, it's been going on for several years. It is one of our more successful programs, working with the police, working with the community on a feeding and sewing program. We have computer classes' upstairs. This is like a central area where the young people as young as these and the older teenagers in high school can come to ask for help, guidance, little skilled training, homework and so forth."
The IDB programme is said to be set at five million us dollars.
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