7 News Belize

Community Service Means Removing Graffiti
posted (September 19, 2014)
Earlier on, we told you about National Service Day. Well, the Belize City Police Eastern Division along with the Belize City Council and students of Wesley College did their part by painting over graffiti on walls around the city neighborhoods. We caught up with the 30 students, 18 police officers and 15 Belize City council staff members through Majestic Alley.

Douglas Hyde - Eastern Division Public Relation Officer
"The police department specifically eastern division along with Wesley College, along with the Belize City Council have partnered today for National Service Day and one of the efforts that we literally embarked on is to have the young people which is 30 of them along with police officers, we have 18 of them and 20 members of the staff of Belize City Council to paint over all graffiti's in Belize City and we've literally look at all the areas, hot spot areas and basically we are going to cover these graffiti's with beautiful colors and the idea of this is to continue this work, not only today but after this to have a competition within the neighborhoods of doing moral, showing or depicting positive messages in the area of positive graffiti's and pictures within their area."

Khyra Harris - Wesley College Student
"Today we are having fun because we as students are giving back to our community because the graffiti take away the beauty from our beautiful and by us painting it, it shows that we care as citizens of Belize. I have painted walls and the basketball court, I am tired but I had fun."

Douglas Hyde - Eastern Division Public Relation Officer
"We started off 9am this morning and we did Pickstock, Jungle area. We also visited Kelly Street. We did Faber's Road extension likewise, Pinks Alley here and we have other communities that we plan to do the first painting of these graffiti and as I said we are going to do the first phase is painting and the second phase we are going to color it up and then we are going to have a competition that we are going to expand to the different communities."

Darrel Bradley - Belize City Mayor
"We had partnered with the police department and with Wesley High School to really celebrate the National Service Day and I really believe in the spirit of the National Service Day. Of course, it was created in the honor of George Price who was the Father of our Nation and if not for him we wouldn't even be celebrating independence and I believe that he lived his life in a certain way that promotes a heart and spirit of service and one of the things that we really wanted to say is during the September celebrations it's not all about the singing and the dancing and the fetes and the different things - it's about nationalism, it's about civic pride, it's about community service. We made it a point to really try to partnered with the police who have an exciting program with young people to really go around the city in certain strategic areas and to repaint buildings that were graffiti and we also work extensively in the hutment area painting the buildings, refurbishing a park in that area and cleaning out the area. I was there from about 8:30 this morning to about 11:30 and then we had young people from Wesley College and other City Council staff who were at other areas like Lovely Lane, Kelly Street. We did beatification and painting in the various areas and I think that this is something that really respects the memory of George Price being that he was such a service and community minded person. I think it's something that every single person should reflect on during the September celebrations. Also what we did is at the end of the whole clean up when we signed off on everything, early this afternoon when everybody was fed and we tidy up everything, in memory of the significance of George Price to the September celebrations also we symbolically laid a wreath at his grave site just in honor of this day and in honor of what he means to the September celebrations."

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