Fishing co-ops receive training funds

While Earth Day celebrations focussed on the health of the marine environment, another ceremony in Belize City highlighted those Belizeans who depend on the sea for their livelihood. Members of the Belize Fishermen Co-operative Association, all six hundred of them, will be eligible for technical training, thanks in part to a fifty thousand dollar grant from the United Nation’s Development Programme’s Global Environmental Facility small grants scheme. The cheque was handed over this morning to the chairman of the Association, Allan Bevans Green. Development advisor Mustafa Toure, says the training will be done in two phases.

Mustafa Toure, Dev. Advisor, B.F.C.A.

“That we used to get information and communication technology equipment for all of the B.F.C.A. member co-operatives, four of them, and the headquarters. They’re all gonna get computers and they’re all going to get resources to pay for Internet linkage to all of them. And there’ll also be training for the member staff on how to use the Internet and email to both communicate, as well as to share information.”

Ann-Marie Williams

“What are the different areas of capacity building you’re looking at?”

Mustafa Toure

“Okay, the main area of capacity building right now is going be in web administration, web development and email administration. Each of the office’s have executive secretaries and they’re going to get training. Once we train our main secretary here, we’re also going to get our training officer to go out and train members of our agencies. So it’s going to be mainly to get the hardware and then to teach and train them how to use it, to use the Internet and the email like almost all businesses do now-a-days.”

The second disbursement of fifty thousand dollars, to be made next year, will be used to purchase GPS units and radios to enable fishermen to assist the Fisheries Department in efforts against illegal fishing.