For the past 10 years, Scotiabank has been providing needy primary school students with scholarships to continue their education.
It's part of their Bright Future Program, and today 77 deserving children accepted their scholarship grants at a ceremony at Scotiabank's Albert Street in Belize City. To keep them motivated to remain in school, the bank staff invited the Eastern Division South's Police Commander, Chester Williams as a guest speaker.
After the Ceremony, we got a chance to talk to the country manager about their reasons for keeping this program alive:
Michael Shaw -Managing Director, Scotiabank Belize
"It's the Scotia bright future where we ensure that we participate in the country's activities. Scotia bank is big unto two really key 
initiatives. Initiative number one is health, initiative number two is education. You can't have a healthy population not being educated and vice versa. Every year we participate in this function where we give a number of scholarships to kids who are transitioning from the junior school to high school. To date we have given over 750 scholarships since the inception of the program."
Daniel Ortiz
"How do you all decide the candidate who receive the scholarship? Is it merit based, need based or a combination of two."
Scotia Bank Representative
"It's a combination of two, but more so a need base because we would want to ensure that every child has the opportunity to learn and some people are less fortunate that others. Those other folks I would like to focus on ensuring that they benefit from the scholarship."
ACP Chester Williams- O. C., Eastern South Division
"It gives me hope and it is good to see that the parents came with them and are very supportive of what they're doing and we need to see more of this. We believe that the parents are more integrally involved in the lives of their children that we'll get better results from them. There are many young people out on the streets who are lost, they have no love and no one who they believe cares for them. Because of that they are out there and they go on the streets and find people who they believe loves them when in fact these people are only using them to commit crimes and get caught up in criminal activities. Initiative like this I believe that it is one where they are seeing Scotia Bank putting their money where their mouth is. I would want to implore upon other business places to do the same, because if we educate our society, we'll get better results at the end of the day. The more uneducated our society will be, the more destructive they will become."
To date, Scotiabank has awarded 754 scholarship grants to deserving students. The country manager told us that the bank is considering the implementation of a mentorship program for the scholarship awardees.
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