7 News Belize

Car Dealer Wants to Get Rebecca a Ride
posted (February 2, 2017)
Rebecca Rath represented Belize in the Miss Universe pageant last Sunday. Although Rath did not win, or even make it into the Top 13 semifinalists, the support she received from her fellow Belizeans was incredible. Many citizens called for a parade to be held in her honor when she returns home next week, while others, such as Emil Torres, wanted to gift her with a brand new car. Torres, who is the manager of Caribbean Motors, came up with the idea to provide Rath with a new Haval SUV - which a line carried by his delaership. The idea was to raise funds through public donations to purchase the car, and then hand it over to Rath.

Howver, since starting the initiative on Tuesday, Torres has received a lot of negative feedback. Many people feel that he might be using the initiative as a marketing ploy, while others feel that the money would be better spent elsewhere. We spoke to Torres today, and gave him a chance to explain exactly what he wants to come out of this effort...

Emil Torres - Caribbean Motors
"The idea came up of course because a lot of people that know me knows that I deal with vehicles. Vehicles are my industry that's what I know. It's my career, it's what I eat breath and sleep. Fortunately and unfortunately at times. So it's only natural that I if came up with an idea or wanted to do something it would have had to steam off from what I know. You can't expect me to want to donate a house or a laptop or a motorcycle. I don't deal with those things. So anyways, long story short, I was talking with some friends and somebody came up with the idea, we should just donate a brand new vehicle to Miss Belize. Unfortunately the company that I work for is a business and they are not a charity. They can't just give a vehicle just like that. They have their limitations. Everybody has their limitation."

"So I came up with the idea on my own. I sat with the directors and said, can I at least have a vehicle at cost. You won't lose any money, we are not going to gain on it, but give me a cost price. Whatever it costs to land in Belize let us be able to raise the funds. I will go out on a limb and raise the funds on my own which I have done. I have gotten a lot of bad publicity from it with the intentions them thinking that I wanted to sell and make commission or whatever the case is and a lot of people talking about feeding hungry children and the poor and all of that stuff. Those are all credible, those are all real situations and scenarios."

"I agree, I understand, those that want to do those initiative, we have supported, I had personally supported over and over different things all day long. We do our part, but this is not about that. This is about not giving a person a fish, this is about teaching them to fish. What she is going to do with this particular vehicle is actually inspire. She is going to need to go out and work. I'm just trying to assist her in getting and of course we could go back to the negative comment again. Why BTB does not give it? Why doesn't the government give it? That's neither here nor there with me, what the government does or doesn't do? The government has actually committed themselves if you want to call it. If we can raise the funds for the vehicle, they will assess with the importation duties. They are doing their part as well. Of course we wish we had a government that had so much money we could have donated more than just a vehicle."

"In some countries their miss universe get brand new homes, brand new vehicles, holidays, everything else. So why we in Belize we have to continue thinking small time? Why do we have to think so minute? Stop it, we could be bigger than that. It's a village mentality. One person can't do it. We can't expect that government will do it. We can't expect that BTB will do it. We can't expect that the family members will continue to do it. We can't expect that Caribbean Tires or Motors or any Bravo or Belize Diesel or BEC will do it."

"There are many companies that would love to have it within their resources, to do those things but we can't rely on anyone one person to do it. So this initiative came up, because I wanted to see if we can get support from the general public, from the people on a whole that wanted to see the cause, to see the cause that we collectively can do it. We have set up right now that we have gotten some good support. I'll be totally honest I will not give dollar figures as yet because, I don't want to spoil it for our telethon."

"Our telethon is going to be on Monday in Dangriga from 9 o clock to 3 o clock. Family and the pageant will be there. People from the community will be there, businesses, banks, everybody will be there to support. Why? Because we are all proud of what it is that this miss universe has done."

Torres also explained that this initiative is just a way from him and other interested Belizeans to do something good for someone they think deserves it, and should not be looked at as a marketing tactic...

Emil Torres - Caribbean Motors
"Originally the conversation started I want to give her a brand new vehicle. I want to see if we could just give her a brand new vehicle, I knew right off the bat that that was unattainable. It almost impossible for anybody to do. If we wanted the publicity, 37 thousand dollars cost price with no taxes or anything on this vehicle would not have been a big price for us to pay for the publicity that we could have gotten."

"Caribbean motors coming in as the hero in this whole thing and giving a vehicle and everybody would have read right through that. Everybody would have known the real reason why people are doing that is to get publicity."

"The bottom line here is, the people in a race, when you have your cross country race, who is the one that actually gets all the station prizes. Is it not the leader of that race? All I'm trying to do is be different and be the leader of whatever I do. Have I not thought that it will get publicity at some point in time? Absolutely. I would be lying if I said that. Eventually the brand will not get publicity. But you know what? if that is part of the reward that we get for wanting to step out of the box and do something creative and different then you know what guys blame me, chastise me, continue blasting me on Facebook and Instagram and whatever, because it doesn't make an ounce of a different. But in reality I don't see a lot of it. We have people that are doing well. You have people that are opening up funds and trying different things. We do, I'm not here to bash anybody, but majority of people are commenting has never donated a single cent to any cause and will never donate a single cent to any cause."

"So what gives them the right to because they have an opinion? It's ok for them to bash a good idea? This is a good idea. Who would have come up with something like this? Let us support each other. The efforts that are going into this, it doesn't matter if it's Rebecca Rath or the future Miss Belize or the following or the following Miss Belize."

"The initiative that is going in right now is a 1 hit wonder. It's not a 1 time thing that we plan to do. So if you are saying that if Caribbean Motors want to do that like they are saying, they would have given them a brand new vehicle from the beginning and Emil Torres wouldn't have had to go through all of this negative from complete strangers that I will probably never meet. We could have just donate a vehicle and call it a day and get all the grand publicity. I'm certain everyone would have been happy, but would that have been hard work? Nothing in this life comes easy. If I did not take the criticism and didn't jump outside the box and continue to take the negative comments and do the hard work, no one would have remembered it. It was just going to be another company wanting to get publicity to donate something. We are being different. What's wrong with being different?"

Torres also told us that he plans to be transparent when handling to money, and that members of Rath's family will be involved in ensure the funds are used for the intended purpose.

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