In a bold effort to drive systemic improvement across Belize’s education sector, a new 16-week pilot leadership training program has launched in Dangriga, centered on upgrading the skills of school principals and senior administrators from two southern districts. The initiative is a joint collaboration between local education non-profit BUILD – founded by education leader Dr. Louis Zabaneh in 2014 – and Belize’s Ministry of Education, focused on building proficiency in competency-based education, an instructional framework that prioritizes mastery of practical skills over traditional rote learning.
Fifty education leaders, 25 from Stann Creek District and 25 from neighboring Toledo District, make up the program’s inaugural cohort, bringing on-the-ground perspective from rural and urban schools across both regions. For Dr. Zabaneh, this pilot marks a major milestone in more than a decade of targeted skills training initiatives hosted by BUILD. Since the organization’s launch, it has delivered a diverse range of community-focused training programs spanning from job interview readiness and emotional intelligence development to vocational cell phone repair, delivered in partnership with the Taiwanese Embassy and the International Cooperation and Development Fund (ICDF). The new master’s-level pilot in competency-based education leadership represents an intentional shift toward long-term systemic education reform, Zabaneh explained.
Program facilitator Dr. Consuela Godfrey outlined the core goals of the training, noting that the curriculum is designed to do more than just introduce new concepts to participating leaders. “We want to build the capacity of our school leaders so that they not only can effectively implement and monitor competency-based education practices within their own schools, but also can deliver the constructive, actionable feedback that helps teachers improve their instruction and move student outcomes forward,” Godfrey said.
For the host community of Dangriga, the launch of this transformative pilot has been met with widespread local enthusiasm. Dangriga Mayor Robert Mariano emphasized that the program represents a point of civic pride, noting that the benefits of the initiative will extend far beyond the participating administrators to reach all residents served by the districts’ schools. “This work is going to benefit all of our people – the community this program represents, the citizens I represent as mayor, and all Belizeans who rely on our public education system,” Mariano said. “It’s incredibly meaningful that this critical effort is getting its start right here in Dangriga.”
Over the next four months, the first cohort will complete the structured training curriculum. Following the program’s conclusion in December 2026, organizers will conduct long-term monitoring, tracking the implementation and impact of the school improvement projects developed by participants through the spring 2027 academic semester to measure the program’s effectiveness and inform potential scaling across other Belizean districts.