International Youth Day 2021

Kevin Bernard

Belize joined the rest of the world today to recognise International Youth Day. It is being celebrated under the theme, “Transforming Food Systems: Youth Innovation for Human and Planetary Health.” But what does that mean for Belize? We asked Youth Minister Kevin Bernard about its significance to the work of his ministry.

Kevin Bernard, Minister of Youth

“There have been a lot of challenges faced in this country and immediately when we took office, the first thing we said is that we need to fix what we found. We want to ensure that we have a new vision; we want to ensure that what was working, we developed on it as well. There has been a lot of great work being done here under the DYS; I want to commend the staff that has been putting together their plans. The mere fact that we have now sat down with everybody countrywide and developed a strategic plan for this ministry is testament to the fact that we have committed people and there have been a lot of strides made. Under this ministry, we are very much committed to ensure that we address the needs of our young people and this team seeks to address that in terms of the work we want to do in agriculture in aquaculture in terms of the western training facility and the northern training institute. So definitely I think a very fitting theme and of course, today, this week, we will be awarding the youth who comes up with the theme for Youth Week in November.”