Women in politics - we can all agree there aren't enough of them - and the National Women's Commission is trying to increase that number with its WIP - or women in politics project.
In its third intake, the programme encourages women over the age of 21 who want to offer themselves as candidates for elections at any level.
Executive Director of the Commission Anne Marie Williams told us why women must get involved:..
Anne Marie Williams, Executive Director - WIP
"We are looking for 20 Belizean women who are willing, not necessarily able at this time but feel like they have the courage to want to stand for elections and that's elections at the village, city, municipal or national level and those are the women we are looking for to train and to socialize for 13 weeks to get a handle on issues that are pertain to politics and national development."
"I have to trump the successes from cohort 1, we have 4 women who went up for the village council elections and 3 were successful, we have a chairlady and 3 councilors and its incremental successes but we haven't gotten to this point over night and of cohort 3; we have 3 women who have sign up for the municipal elections in 2012. So we are having successes and I am happy about that because if the WIP program was here 10 years ago we wouldn't be in this position."
Jules Vasquez
"Which particular position are you talking about?"
Anne Marie Williams, Executive Director
"Where there are no women in the House. So if you look at the incremental successes of where WIP is going - it's to develop a critical mass of women for parliament."
The public call closes on Friday of this week.
The 13-week training programme starts in October and ends with a graduation ceremony in March.
To date, 69 of 78 women have graduated from Cohorts I & II of the Award-winning programme.
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