And the Ministry of Youth is hoping to expand its services to help other youths to get training. But Bernard said they won't stop there, they want to ensure that after the training, those young people will be able to get jobs. He explained more about the programs in place that will be able to reach out to youths across the country.
Hon. Kevin Bernard, Minister of Youth
"If you look at the mile 21 facility that we offer training, we want by September that we can start with 150 young people. I know through the department, we have assisted about 50 young people with scholarship programs, thankfully the director have been able to reach out through the business community to assist these young people, what we want as well is the get these young people to come in and learn something but not only to learn and get a certificate, I keep repeating that that when they leave we want them to be marketable out there, we want them to be employable, and this is what the DYS is engaged in. we no longer want to see our young people just come to a training and leave without anything. We want them to be able to be out there, to get employed, just like what these young people are doing, if they want to be trained how to set up a business plan so th4ey can start their little business. Down in PG we saw a young man for example who does his own sauce but doesn't have any other guidance. We're saying to them, this is where we come in. we must support them, we must give them the tools necessary to get them on their feet and then they build. So there's a lot of opportunities here that we are trying to afford our young Belizean youth and this is the way to go."
"What we have done in terms of the youth apprenticeship program, we have changed it to the entrepreneurship and on the job skill training program, similar to what the youth apprenticeship program is but we want to make it more open and accessible to young people so we want to make sure these program are spread across the country in every district so definitely that something that we are doing and like I mentioned, we are starting with a 150 young people in September but we are committed to ensuring we touch the lives of our Belizean youth across this country."
