Day one in Belize

Our trip is finally here! Please follow our journey through Belize.

We have an exciting agenda during our two week stay in Belize.  The first few days will be spent planning and becoming accustomed to Belize culture followed by lectures on health and education policies in Belize. The second week will be spent completing a service learning project at Stella Maris School a school for children with disabilities in Belize City.

We flew from Corpus Christi airport to Dallas where we met with 7 students and faculty advisor Melissa Garcia from Texas A&M International University who are joining us on our Belize trip. The flight to Belize was a quick 2.5 hours and we were greeted by our guide Ewart from the University of Belize international studies office. We arrived at Princess Hotel and Casino for the night. We will be going to San Pedro Island in the morning by water taxi to study the sand composition on the beach and indigenous aquatic life. This evening we will be doing an intensive cultural study of the New Year’s Eve traditions in Belize.

Spirits are high and we are all looking forward to our journey!

Please follow our Facebook page and Blog for daily photo updates:

https://www.facebook.com/StudentsForGlobalCommunication

Brianna Bates

Founding President, Students for Global Communication

Some of group at Airport in Belize City 

SGC Group in Dallas Airport waiting for flight to Belize City

Deposits in for Belize! Moving forward

Our program has been progressing and we are happy to announce we have paid our first two deposits and will be going to Belize. As of right now we are 8 graduate students and 2 undergraduate students for Texas A&M University-Kingsville. We will be going to Belmopan, Belize and studying at the University of Belize.

Right now we are in the process of translating a speech and language screening tool – the Fluharty Preschool Speech and Language  Screening Test into Belizean Kriol. We will be collecting different resources and making an online sharing portal that can be used with professionals and families in Belize.

We will be attending the University of Belize where we will be getting lectures from the Ministry of Education and Ministry of Health. We will be doing 6 days of service learning at sites the University arranges. We hope these sites will provide us with ideas on what they think they need and we can assist them.

It has been a hard and long journey to even get this far but we are finally seeing our project come together.

We are asking for donations from anyone interested in helping us pay for our trip and mission.

Brianna Bates
Founding President, Students for Global Communication
brianna.bates@students.tamuk.edu

Planning for Belize

Hello everyone!  Welcome to our blog! We are the Students for Global Communication organization at Texas A&M University – Kingsville.   We have decided to start this little blog to share our story as we get ready to do our first service project in Belize.

First off, we’d like to share a little about ourselves and this organization.  We are all graduate students studying Speech Language Pathology at Texas A&M University Kingsville.  We have come together to start this organization because we are passionate about serving our global community.  We believe that the ability to communicate effectively is a human right and should be achievable and accessible to all.  Our organization’s goal is to provide speech therapy services and education to the under-served populations around the world.

As such, we are currently planning our first service trip to Belize.  We are very excited to work with the Belizian people and hope to develop a good relationship with the community we will be working with.  Since this is our first trip, our main purpose is to find out what the community’s needs are and provide those services accordingly.  There are currently no Speech Language Pathologists working in the area, so this is also a great opportunity to foster awareness of our field.

The exact location we will be staying at has yet to be finalized, but we will update information as we learn it.  Follow us to support our journey!

Brianna Bates
Founding President, SGC

–SGC