Things at YES are going well. Ginnie planned an assertive communication session for the April Leadership Group meeting and the girls were excellent participants in the many activities planned to practice passive, assertive, and aggressive communication styles. The aggressive scenarios always ended up with laughs because when the girls rail up on each other in Kriol it is something – you do not want to get into a confrontation with a strong Kriol woman! I forgot the camera that day, but Ms. Inda took some photos with the office camera. I will get some from her and post when I can.
The most recent activity has been a three week parenting class. I took on the topic of nutrition and spent weeks researching everything about nutrition for pregnancy, infancy, and toddler years. I even spent countless hours calculating the nutrition facts of commonly used foods here in Belize (there is a great site http://www.nutritiondata.com/ in which you can input nearly any food and find out its values). I focused on the ingredients so the information can then be used to create a nutrition fact sheet for an entire meal once broken down – a lot of work, but quite a valuable tool! The session went really well 
– the moms participated in all the activities of identifying the categories on the new USDA food guide pyramid and then taking common Belizean foods and putting them into the different categories. They also played the Most Nutritious/Least Nutritious food choice game and did a good job of identifying the better choices. They closed by creating a weekly menu based on a balance of the foods we need each day. It was a lot of fun and I hope they will try to make some small changes to increase the nutritional content of their meals. Just using brown rice for white rice will be a huge step and a big health boost.
– the moms participated in all the activities of identifying the categories on the new USDA food guide pyramid and then taking common Belizean foods and putting them into the different categories. They also played the Most Nutritious/Least Nutritious food choice game and did a good job of identifying the better choices. They closed by creating a weekly menu based on a balance of the foods we need each day. It was a lot of fun and I hope they will try to make some small changes to increase the nutritional content of their meals. Just using brown rice for white rice will be a huge step and a big health boost.
Graduation for the parenting class was held yesterday and the moms looked great. Their closing session was all about taking care of themselves and finding ways to make time for themselves every day. It was fun to spend these sessions with them and I am looking forward to our next support group/information session on June 5th. I’ve been asked to facilitate on the topic of post-natal depression... back to the research!
Our next leadership group meeting is on May 30th and we planned a really great discussion session on teen pregnancy because both Ms. Inda and I are concerned about the fact that we still have so many new mothers (even some from leadership group). We want to try and learn why girls still engage in risky behaviors when they are informed about protection and consequences associated with unprotected sex. It could be a very good discussion and eye-opening for us.
In other YES projects, work on the “My Future is Not For Sale” campaign has been going for months. The campaign targets intergenerational transactional sex and human trafficking. Peer educators have visited several schools to talk with upper division students about these topics and do activities with them. I was able to sit in on the presentation at Trinity and offer support. We hope that by educating young people they will be able to identify ITS and get information on who to contact if they realize they or someone
they know is in this situation.
they know is in this situation. I really enjoy my work with YES and plan to continue working with the leadership group since we meet on Saturdays and I will be around.
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