How will LIU Continue Its Work in Lake-I?

Let’s revisit our top story: the tragic death of Brandon Baptist on Friday night has once again put the spotlight on the Leadership Intervention Unit (L.I.U.). The L.I.U. has been doing crucial work with at-risk youths throughout Belize City, especially in Lake Independence. Earlier today, we had a chance to chat with Dominique Noralez, the Director of the L.I.U., about their approach to helping the youth in Lake-I.

 

Dominique Noralez, Director, Leadership Intervention Unit

“Our strategy, particularly in that area, is to remain in contact with the persons who are perceived and who have been labeled as gang members and gang affiliates.  And so the employment program that we run in that area is of particular interest, but one of the things that I ensured that we did when I came onboard some one year ago, is to ensure that we roll out social programs as well, or direct our clients to social programs because we can’t do all of that. If you are to look at that particular initiative, how do you gauge or measure the efficacy of it?  While there is the financial component where you’re paying for these young men, and perhaps women, to be meaningfully engaged, how do you look at the overall effectiveness of it? I think, for us, many a times people come to us.  In fact, we just finished our data collection process with our new cohort.  This is the fourth cohort that we have and many of our clients have dropped out of school in high school, some of them have not even been to high school, they stopped at Standard Six.  There’s a cultural confidence things as well because some people think that they’re not good enough to re-enter into the formal education system or even good enough to apply for a job that I’m pretty sure they can learn on the job.  And so we are trying to do a better job at monitoring and evaluating our people after they… leave the program.”