Economic Empowerment of Women in Latin America and the Caribbean

Over at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade in Belmopan, a second handing over ceremony was held for the Enhancing the Economic Empowerment of Women in Latin America and the Caribbean in the COVID-19 Post-Pandemic Era Project. In this second cohort of recipients, the numbers are up from four to seven. News Five’s Duane Moody files this report. 

Duane Moody, Reporting

The Enhancing the Economic Empowerment of Women in Latin America and the Caribbean in the COVID-19 Post-Pandemic Era project was created to encourage women and youth in entrepreneurship and advancing opportunities.  The grant funding is being made possible through support from the Government of Taiwan.

Amalia Mai, C.E.O., Ministry of Foreign Affairs & Foreign Trade

“It’s important that we prepare ourselves for the post-pandemic, for the recovery of the economy and we find that these grants funding that is being facilitated by the Government of Taiwan, our good friend and ally is important to have the women, to the young people employed, trained and let them become far more active within our country. This is the second group that will be receiving the funds and we are very happy that you were selected. The process of selection is extremely rigorous and we have a power steering committee that Ambassador Chien mentioned before and we go through all the details to make sure that you qualify and we will be monitoring everything that is done, how the monies will be put to good use and the benefits of it towards society, to your communities.”

David Kuan-Chou Chien

David Kuan-Chou Chien, Taiwanese Ambassador to Belize

“It is an ongoing project with one of its goals being to achieve countrywide reach; the goal is more a reality with three additional proposals having been identified. These proposals meet the core objectives of the project which are to boost the economy post-pandemic with vocation and financial assistance for micro enterprises women and youth.”

Among those seven successful recipients is Umbraland, recently featured on Channel Five  for its locally-made leather footwear. Four others were chosen from the Belize Investment Summit held back in early November.

Jaime Marin

Jaime Marin, Umbraland Boots & Leather

“Belize has the capacity to export up to five thousand hides a month which is way below what the demand is. We have the raw material, the by-product all over Belize and Umbraland is hoping that we can reach to that development stage with this fund, upgrading one of our main tumblers and also ecological waste product management along with this. My wife, as part of this team, I am the technical person and she is more the person that handles that.”

April Martinez

April Martinez, Heritage Education Network of Belize

“Heritage Education Network Belize is a four female-led organization and we just started about a year ago. And this is what we started our organization for. We wanted to promote small cultural and creative businesses that don’t get to see the light of day due to all of the other bigger tourism industry. So this is something that we have been doing for a year for free and so we are very appreciative of this grant to expand our reach.”

BELTRAIDE Representative

BELTRAIDE Representative

“BELTRAIDE is very excited to be a recipient of funding under the Women Empowerment Project. We are going to be implementing the female entrepreneurship program in Orange Walk. The female entrepreneurship program is a regional methodology that was adopted for our own reality and situations in Belize.”

Duane Moody for News Five.