Belize City Mayor Darrell Bradley recently returned from a Commonwealth Local Government Forum in Trinidad. It's a follow up to a meeting held in Belize six weeks ago - and Bradley attended as part of the steering committee for the CARILED project.
But it's not just meetings for the sake of it - the project is for 23 million Canadian Dollars to be distributed amongst municipalities in seven participating countries.
Bradley explained that by the end of the year the project should be working on the ground in Belize - funding micro-enterprise and creating employment.
Mayor Darrell Bradley
"The project really means to strengthen the capacity of municipalities to promote job creation initiatives within the municipality and there would be a component of the program which has to do with direct grants to small businesses within the municipality and they are trying to promote youth lead businesses and women lead businesses in addition to the general."
"One of the biggest pressures that we get at city hall is that people want jobs and so this would really strengthen the capacity of our municipality to deliver on that mandate - job creation and economic development within the city limits."
"By August or September of this year people should see on the ground works in the various 7 countries that have been chosen and the executive director of the project will come again to Belize and they would just start setting up the project, so people should see things happening going into the close of this year."
The GRANT funding is divided equally amongst the seven participating countries.
