Since its inception in 2014, about 900 people have participated in Beltraide’s Belize Training and Employment Center program, BTEC. And out of that 900, about 80% or 720 participants are employed. Well, that is the hope for the 66 who completed the training today. All 66 received certificates for completing one of three of the main courses offered: Housekeeping, the introduction and advanced level of bartending, and front desk training. Now, these fields might not seem like the most highly regarded job options but according to the participants and Beltraides’s representative, these training sessions can open up many business opportunities:
Courtney Weatherbure
"Do you have any prior skills or knowledge about bartending?"
Renesha Reynolds - Intro & Advanced Bartending Training
"I have no experience bartending outside of my house but I know knowledge about bartending because I watch a lot of TV shows about bartending and stuff like that."
Courtney Weatherburne
"What are some of the drinks you were comfortable making at home with your family and friends?"
Renesha Reynolds
"I tried different drinks like rum and coke but I learnt that the correct name is old fashion so yes.."
Courtney Weatherburne
"So to the course tell us how it was for you, how long it was and what you are taking away of course from it."
Renesha Reynolds
"The intro was only 3 days and the advanced was 4 days and there was lot of things I learnt from the advanced, things I didn’t know and I know it will help me great in the bartending field."
Justin Guzman - Front Desk Training
"First and foremost I met a lot of awesome people, secondly I learnt about soft skills and hard skills I mean basically you know how to answer a phone, basic etiquette, keep a smile from 10 feet away you know basically just greeting people."
Shaleni Young - House Keeping Training
"Well for housekeeping I would never thought I would actually do it because I don’t do much work but getting into the program it was really challenging because me and cleaning don’t really go together but what I have learnt is that basic stuff around your house also helps with cleaning, they taught you stuff they didn’t know about and yeah it helped a lot."
Lejia Melanie Gideon - General Manager, Enterprise & Innovation, BELTRAIDE
"The way how BTEC is designed, it is designed to be responsive to the industry needs, we do not design any training program that is not being asked for so we developed our janitorial and housekeeping last quarter this is the second time we are doing it, this first quarter for this year the first training we ever did was a direct response to the service industry which is our front desk service and then the bartending its being responsive to what are the needs there."
Courtney Weatherburne
"So what you are pretty much saying is that now bartending, housekeeping and so forth those are in high demand, the industries want more of those or people in those fields?"
Lejia Melanie Gideon
Yes, it is one of those things that we try to balance between what the industry is wanting and then there is another function of Beltraide; the small business development centre which focuses on small enterprises and in this case micro enterprises. A house keeper technically can be their own micro enterprise so it is teaching them how to be your own boss and with the skills you get from either the SBDC or from the BTEC training as well, it is how you can be your own boss and hire somebody else because the mandate, the success rate of Beltraide is how much jobs we create, everything we do is for the creation of jobs and if not how do we get you into the jobs that are available."
"As of January this year we have employed just under, trained just under 900 people okay? And again with an 80% retention employment rate, we are pretty proud because BTEC is an impress team of six."
Beltraide will assist in setting up job interviews for these 66 participants. Beltraide will also start another training on February 6th  .   It’s called home and health care and it runs for 5 weeks.
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