7 News Belize

BOOST Program Gets Great Funding From OAS
posted (July 16, 2015)
The Boost programme - it provides financial support to thousands of needy and indigent families across central and southern Belize. And more than that, the programme has become a model across the region for making conditional cash transfers without creating a welfare underclass. IT has been recognized by the World Bank and today the OAS contributed 130 thousand dollars to support implementation of an extension to the programs: what's called wraparound services to 400 of the most needy households. CEO Judith Alpuche explained at a press conference at the OAS Belize City Office today:...

Judith Alpuche, CEO - Ministry of Human Development
"When we talk about social workers wrap-around services, it's really looking holistically at what that family needs and working with that family in a holistic way instead of just patch-patch if you will. So we will be doing a pilot that targets 400 BOOST household and we are looking specifically at those households that are below the indigent line - the poorest of the poor. To see how is it that we can, as the name suggests, literally wrap services around these families - to help them to move up to the next level."

"Basically what we look at is looking at families and what is it that a family needs. So, doing a proper assessment of what that family needs and having a social worker have the time to be able to work out a plan with that family, with the goal of trying to elevate the family to the next level. So in an indifferent domain, if you will, what are the income concerns of the family; what are the skill training concerns; what are the concerns in terms of health, education etc., within that family - to make sure that the basic needs of the family are met."

Hon. Anthony Boots Martinez, Minister of Human Development
"Many times we think just give them a job and that will solve everything and yes, employment is a big piece of the puzzle, but I know from the work program that I have been involved in that it is not as easy as that."

"When people are unskilled and very poor and have been in a survival mode, sometimes for generations, they need support to even get them to a mental place where they can function in a regular employment situation."

Judith Alpuche
"You know some of these very poor families are excluded from society because a simple thing like a birth certificate - how do you get a social security card if you don't have a birth certificate? How do you get a bank account of you don't have a birth certificate? - That sort of thing - it's elementary to us who are in a better position, who have more knowledge of the system. They become really serious barriers for families."

Jules Vasquez
"Inevitably, the person on the ground is an area representative and he is either UDP or PUP and the people that he seeks to help most are the people who have helped him or her and so how is that kept firewalled from political patronage or clientelism?"

Judith Alpuche
"These are BOOST families. These are families who are already in the system and BOOST has been verified by the World Bank. We use a proxy-means test to basically measure. So to see whether or not you qualify, so we put you through this exercise and we give you a score and that score is correlated to the poverty line or even the indigence line and then that determines whether or not you qualify for BOOST. So it's that population that we are already working with in terms of BOOST - that have already been proxy-means tested and determine to be eligible, that we will be looking at those who are at the indigent line or lower and working with..."

Starret Dickson Greene, OAS Representative - Belize
"Belize's social inclusion, social protection, social program has emerged as a model that some member states of the OAS have been studying, even as they are developing their own social development programs."

The department of social services also hopes to benefit from what's called south-south cooperation, where through the OAS, they will get to see how similar social safety net programs are managed in Latin American countries. v The OAS funding to support the wraparound programme will be disbursed between August 2015 and July 2017.

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