<
p>Over the next four years the Belize Rural Development Programme will invest seventeen million dollars to help build the necessary infrastructure that promises to generate income in at least sixty villages that are mostly remote and underdeveloped. A total of eleven grants will be awarded. This morning the young Women’s Christian Association which focuses on the development of women and youth received just over $900,000. The money will be used to fund the YWCA Gender Based Rural Sustainable Livelihoods Programme. That two year programme was launched today. According to the Programme’s Coordinator Dana Rhamdas part of the grant will be used to expand the Y’s building that will allow an even greater number of younger women from the rural areas to be trained.
Dana Rhamdas, Coordinator
“The second component is the recruitment and training of 150 women and youth from rural communities throughout Belize. These women will be offered skills training in various different areas of their choice which will include things such as hospitality, food preparation, food preservation, cake decorating, sewing, child care, training etc. – will be some of the areas that they will have access to training in.”
Marcelino Avila, Technical Director – BRDP
“They will train them but in addition they will be able to provide some start up capital, like a micro grant for those that have been trained in order to be able to initiate their own enterprises. There are three out of every ten Belizean that are poor. Two of them are in the rural area so we want get them out of poverty. If they want to get their selves out of poverty, essentially they have to develop their economic activities, that is create wealth, generate income and employment, and only so the people can get out of poverty themselves.
Every one of these grants is focusing on a high priority area that was identified as being very critical for the development of the rural areas. YWCA is focusing on the capacity building of women and youths. They are accustomed to working in Belize City but we want them to expand to the Belize District and even go beyond into the other districts of the country.”
The Belize Rural Development Project is funded by the government of Belize and the European Union. BRDP invests in equipment, small infrastructure, technology and techniques to help people to acquire better skills for the management of resources.
