The OAS is celebrating fifteen years in Belize and today, they met with over thirty key stake holders in governmental and non-governmental organizations in an accountability seminar. While the organization is celebrating major achievements in Belize - and invited much self congratulation, there remains a lot of work to be done. We spoke with Kim Osborne, OAS Representative in Belize, and she told us that the seminar is aimed at bridging the gap of communication:
Kim Osborne, OAS Representative, Belize
"Essentially we have been doing a lot of work here in Belize. many people do not know of our work and we think its important for us to one; inform our partners, inform the country of what it is that we are doing as an organization, why are we here? Why we are a part of that internationally body called the OAS and how the programs and projects that the OAS is implementing can benefit them. we also wanted to have a broader discussion with our international partners to look at common areas of collaboration, how do we pool the resources that we each have individually to bring to bear upon the development of Belize."
Lisel Alamilla, Ya'axche Conservation Trust
"As to our conservation work, our main partner in funding that work is the OAS. It has not gone smoothly, I will not say that the relationship has been smooth and without bumps but I must say that despite that what has been very evident in our relationship is that there has been tremendous commitment from Ms. Osborne and her team to ensure that whatever are the hiccups that we are addressing them to ensure project success."
Laura Esquivel-Frampton, Director of Quality Assurance - BTB
"At the BTB we also have to give work permit recommendations when it comes to anything in the tourism industry and I was appall to see the hotels or restaurants sending in work permit request for foreigners who have no certification but simply because they are foreigners - they are better than the people who are working here all their lives, they started as little helpers, they are moving up but they are kept down because they are not foreigner and because they have no certification. So there is no chance for promotion for these people and that is what we tackle in the last two years of this program. Like Kim said we did start with 20 people, the biggest difficulty was the math skills and the financial management. We have also found the cooking, they can do that, they just need to sharpen up on their skills."
Kim Osborne, OAS Representative, Belize
"I think we had tremendous accomplishments in Belize, again we've not been very good at communicating our accomplishments, we've done a lot of work in training and capacity building for example helping Belize in that area, we've done a lot of work in economic development, lots of programs and projects everything from working with people on the environment from sustainable livelihoods, we've publish lots of studies, in terms of looking at the feasibility of different programs and products and for Belize we've done a lot of work on the adjacency zone with Belize maintaining that the good relations through the confidence building measures that we have been implementing over from 2005 to now. So what we are trying to do now is to operate in a more coherent way, operative in a more corporative manner and we hope that going forward our programs will be better communicated."
In his remarks, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade, Wilfred Elrington expressed his gratitude and re-affirmed his commitment to working closely with the OAS for sustainable development of Belize.
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