Crime Stoppers Belize Backs Yabra’s Young Players

Crime Stoppers Belize is extending its crime prevention efforts beyond traditional policing by investing in youth development through sports. The NGO has handed over football equipment, including jerseys and footballs, to the Yabra Football Club, supporting its under-thirteen, under-fifteen and under-seventeen teams. The initiative is aimed at giving the young players a positive outlet for their energy while encouraging discipline, teamwork and community involvement.

 

Douglas Hyde, Director, Crime Stoppers Belize

“It’s very important. Intervention through sports and I realise that it plays a deep impact on these kids when they are not doing nothing then they become idle. So if we can  do more initiatives like this where you’re sponsoring teams but also that these teams  can get developed to compete because the competition helps them to build sportsmanship, camaraderie, discipline, respect and many other things that the members here at the Yabra Football Club, the management, teaches these guys every day in terms of understanding and communication skills and stuff. So when we do initiatives like this it plays a huge impact on these young boys in terms of better behaviour, not to get themselves in crime and very importantly to love each other.”

 

Rudolf McCoy, Coach, Yabra Football Club

“It will help us a lot because we have like five teams right now. We have an under-ten team, an under-thirteen team, an under-fifteen and an under-seventeen team and we have pretty much no corporate sponsor, we are supported by pretty much grassroots and our personal funds. So this came in extremely handy to us, it’s like a blessing. These are the national champions, these same kids. And they are not just footballers, I see progress in them. You see the difference in their lifestyle. This community is no longer a community like in the 17th where it was just crime. No, it’s not that anymore. These guys are achieving. Most of our contributors are guys that went abroad from this club and  they look back and say some of them are attorneys, teachers, doctors. It’s much more than sports. It’s much more than that.”

 

Attention readers: This online newscast is a direct transcript of our evening television broadcast. When speakers use Kriol, we have carefully rendered their words using a standard spelling system.

 

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