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Yesterday, the grown-ups discussed the issue and today children and young adolescents gave their testimony inside the Belize Elementary School Auditorium. Executive Director of NCFC Pearl Stuart told us what they hoped to learn:

Pearl Stuart, Executive Director of NCFC
"The first day was yesterday, that is where we had the stakeholders or what we called the duty bearers. Those entities, agencies, individuals that are in fact responsible for protecting our children and we had a very good conferences yesterday in fact what came out of that was actually a group that will be drafting up what we are going to called a child protection action plan. It will take a little while to get that together because we want the implementers, who are the ones that will be helping to draft this, to actually tie in with timelines as to when these particular activities will be taken place, so that will be done. We are looking at a draft, perhaps another week to ten days and today we have the children participation. We are trying to get a culture of young people involve in what's happening to them so this is the first of them participating in the issues affecting them. We are hoping and if you look you will notice that they have their shirts on that say that they're change agents and I am sure you will be talking to some of them. To in fact learn how to go about doing that, take that back to their schools, get the others involve and in fact become what it says, a change agent."

"Now we're hoping that next year, when they come back, they will in fact hold us to task of the things that they feel should be done and this is the first of what we hope will become an annual State of the Nation Children Conferences."

"We've had a spate of child abuse, we've had neglect, we've had rape. We can't do that, we are all responsible for our children. And I have been saying repeatedly it begins from the home to the schools to the churches to the communities at large to the government officials to any and every one of us plays a part including the media and you guys are to be commended because you did a very good job recently in fact hiding the identity of some of our victims and I really applaud you guys for that."

At the close of the event, the students were tasked to identify ways their schools can become more active in standing up for the rights of children in Belize. Children's Participation Groups will be formed all over the country as well, as a means of strengthening Belize's child protection network.