7 News Belize

Audrey, What’s Next?
posted (August 21, 2013)
Audrey Matura is leaving OCEANA tomorrow – but yesterday she got one last hit of publicity when Oceana launched a new website that is designed to serve as a teaching aid.

It came out of the fact that OCEANA receives many invitations to make school presentations and sometimes just can't accommodate everyone – so the website will fill in the blanks:

Monica Bodden
"What type of information can the public get from off this website?"

Audrey Matura-Shepherd, VP, Oceana Belize
"They can get from issues of mangrove, climate change, energy and just bio diversity of the Belizean environment on a whole, so basically, every marine aspect of the environment, they can find on the website. They can get basic information for a primary school student to as high level for a university graduate, so it spans a spectrum, and it's very relevant and pertinent to Belize. Many times when you do research you find mangrove but not specific to Belize where she curtailed it specific for Belize. As a matter of fact, she actually went to the Ministry of Education website to see what is the curriculum requirement in the school, so that she knows what are some of the information she has to do and put it together, so that is what she did."

And while the website endures in the electronic ether, Audrey Matura Shepherd is moving on. She told us what's next.

Audrey Matura Shepherd
"My final day with Oceana is this Thursday, August 22nd; after thursday which is Friday 23rd I am no longer the VP of Oceana, I;m just me Audrey Matura-Shepherd moving on to another phase of my life."

Monica Bodden
"Is it a bitter-sweet moment for you?"

Audrey Matura Shepherd
"No really you know because if anyone follows my carrier they will see that I'm a start up person, I go into something, I start the pace then I move on. Channel 7 is an example; I started channel 7 news and when it was time for me to move on, I never felt bitter about it, I felt sweet about it because I am a person who believes that if you really have knowledge, if you are competent in what you do, you use it to build and when you move on, you don't close it down, you share it with others so that someone can continue in building, so it's not bitter-sweet for me. I'm very at peace with the decision, I feel that everyone I met remains my friend if they want to be my friend. I'm always available to help them and I feel that I'm ready to move on, I'm happy with that so it's sweet. I would want people that truly are supportive of me to be also happy for me because this is what I really want to do."

Monica Bodden
"What's next for you?"

Audrey Matura Shepherd
"I am going into private practice. I've never got to go into private practice. After I qualified as an attorney I was a prosecutor at the DPPs' office and then I was at legal aid as the director and I was just planning to go into private practice when Oceana approached me and asked me if I would take on this challenge and I did, but I took that detour and now I'm going back to where I wanted to go, which is going into private practice and do many cases. I know I will be behind many historical cases; I'm excited about it."

Monica Bodden
"Earlier my colleague from Krem asked you if you had any interest in politics."

Audrey Matura Shepherd
"People like to ask me that because they think that maybe I will do well in politics but I think that's where they're wrong, in the sense that I was in politics and then I realized is just too much compromise. When you are with a bigger group, you on principle may not agree with something because that's your principle but the rest go because they don't have any principle or their standards are low and when you get into politics you have to be prepared to say 'I don't agree' and resign, I don't see politicians doing that in this country. They just go along and they compromise their values and compromise and compromise, so I don't see it's necessarily the natural thing that I would do, going into politics, but, I always say too, 'it's not absolutely no nor absolutely yes'. Right now that is not an aspiration of mine. My aspiration is more to be an activist in this country, to move people into a higher purpose and so I really want to start a movement, wherein, I can get the average Belizean to join a movement, not a political party, not an organization, a movement, where we, from north, south, east and west look at the real national issues and as a critical mass, no matter which government is in power, which party is in power, pressure them into doing the right thing."

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