Promoting Empowerment Through Awareness For Lesbian/Bisexual Women (PETAL) held its annual form today under the theme: Mind, Body, Spirit.
The focus this year was twofold, partly to empower their members through awareness of services provided by financial institutions geared at promoting entrepreneurship but also at self-care and self-awareness.
We got the gist of today's program from PETAL president, Charrice Talbert:
Charrice Talbert, President, Petal
"One of the things is PETAL focuses primarily on economic empowerment and we have received a grant, a small grant from the United Nations trust fund where we are embarking for the next three years to have women become entrepreneurs, we want at the. End of that project, we are hopeful that we have three hundred women become entrepreneurs and so engage these services through entrepreneurship, through the financial institutions it's to see how beneficial it is to them, the services that they have or don't have and for the services that they have, how much of or how useful that is to them."
Cherisse Halsall:
"Wonderful,I know there was also a self-help aspect to this, why is that so important?"
Charrice Talbert, President, Petal
"The forum this year is themed mind, body, and soul, it's the same as last year but this year we continued by focusing on being economically embodied, now when a person wants to go into business or just a person being holistic. It isn't just going to be about the finances, it's not just going to be about having a stable form of employment whether that is for yourself or working for somebody but you also have to be right in your mind along with your body and your soul for you to be that complete wholesome person and so we did not want to miss any area while we provided these services to persons."
President Talbert also noted that a large focus of this economic empowerment program for Lesbian/Bisexual women are the rural areas of Belize.
