And finally tonight, we're turning back to last week's story about the Federation of Fishers, and their outrage at being denied a grant by Belize Fund for a Sustainable Future or what they would see as "The Blue Bond Money."
During our conversation with the Federation Director Nigel Martinez, he explained that his goal had been to bring awareness to fishers, the people who really occupy blue spaces, but he claims that his organization hasn't received adequate support.
Well, today we got a response from Executive Director of the Fund for a Sustainable Future Leandra Cho-Ricketts. She explained why the federation - while an important group in the area of marine conservation - just wasn't qualified to properly administer the funds that could have come from the grant they sought.
Dr Leandra Cho-Ricketts, Executive Director, Belize Fund for a Sustainable Future
"They had not had a general meeting for over two years so as an organization they did not show or present that they are an active organization, um, that their membership was engaged with this proposal and in support of it. We asked for letters of support from their association, so they were made up of member associations, they did not provide us with that nor with the letter of support and I think Mr Martinez said, you know, they were trivial things but in. The scope of doing due diligence and awarding funding if the fisheries department is not in support of investigating and piloting a new fishery that there is a concern for us we don't want to fund something that may not have the um, support of the fisheries department who are the regulators, but even before that we wanted to know that the fishing communities that they are representing are on board with it."
"Secondly in terms of staff to be managing 150k dollars well we need to know that you have in place financial persons, project managers and so forth because there is a whole process for how you manage the funds and report and that and we did not see where evidence of that, I think Mr. Martinez said he works on a voluntary basis and I think there are other project coordinators and so we are like ok well um it raises questions then in terms of capacity and then finally the proposal itself was not complete in terms of how they plan to sustain that beyond getting equipment to put fishermen out there to fish and expanding and developing a new fisheries more than jus buying the gear and just putting them out there, you know we need to understand yield and impacts and all those things."
"The idea, we liked that the fishing federation appealed, you know a fishing organization and it's a good concept for looking at diversifying the fisheries but it needed more work before it could be funded."
Cho-Ricketts says the Federation of Fishers can re-apply when the second call opens in August, In. The interim, the BFSF gave them a list of recommendations.
