First-ever Bi-national Women Alliance between Belize and Guatemala
Today, the Network Internacional de Mujeres Empresarias, or in English, the International Network of Women in Business was officially launched in Belize City. Aside from increasing its visibility through the launch, the organization took the opportunity to recruit female entrepreneurs who are interested in networking opportunities with other Belizean-owned companies, as well as entrepreneurs in Guatemala and beyond. NIME wants to provide support for entrepreneurs to build capacity and pop-up sessions to promote businesses. The media corps was there for the launch and News Five’s Duane Moody reports.
Duane Moody, Reporting
The International Network of Women in Business: Belize-Guatemala was formally registered back in September, with the goal to create a mechanism that will allow women in both countries to network and support business growth via a female-led entity. The president is Katia Montenegro-Hoare, who says that the work started years ago.
Katia Montenegro-Hoare
Katia Montenegro-Hoare, President, NIME
“The work started years and years ago. I was a working mom, like many of the women in there. NIME is exactly that. NIME is not myself, it is the ladies that are in there with the vision to also empower other women. It started as that little tingling in your head saying that you need to do something else, you need to empower more women to empower more women. So even though the association became formal two months ago, we started working years ago, connecting with people, finding the right persons, aligning with women that have the same vision and passion.”
The first-ever Binational Women Alliance between Belize and Guatemala is looking beyond the territorial dispute and focused on breaking the barriers faced by female entrepreneurs in micro and small enterprises in the formal and informal economy and tapping into larger markets.
Katia Montenegro-Hoare
“We are very honoured to have the support of businesswomen from the entire region, not only Guatemala in this case for the association. So we have eight countries, and in addition Dominican Republic, coming together to support women. What objectives we want to achieve with NIME is to be part of the region, to create more opportunities for growth, empowerment and definitely for societal change. We want to be actors that contribute to the community and improvement of Belize as well.”
On display were a number of Belizean-made products ready to be marketed beyond our borders. Today, a number of businesswomen were presented with membership certificates. Also in attendance was Minister of New Growth Industries, Kareem Musa who says that the government has to support initiatives like these, including opening doors for female entrepreneurs to access financing.
Kareem Musa
Kareem Musa, Minister of New Growth Industries
“These women have done something extremely innovative and creative and passionately so, they’ve actually formed an association of all very talented, brilliant and, like I said, passionate women, who have a unique skill in whatever craft that they are doing or coming up with and they don’t want to just limit that to Belize. As you know we have a very small population and so they are breaking boundaries and going across borders – not just to Guatemala, but looking beyond – expanding their tentacles across the world. As Minister of New Growth Industries, I have to do my part. I have to stand beside them to help them – whether it is to establish incentives and policies that could help them to get their products outside, to make sure that they have representation on trade committees, because as you know whenever the trade committees between countries, bilateral trade committees come together it is always to discuss the big products, but we are not looking at these very unique products that our women are producing. And so getting their products outside of Belize is absolutely essential and of course, networking with banks like the D.F.C. We made that connection as well to say this is something that we want the D.F.C. to invest in – in our women who have come up with amazing products.”
Duane Moody for News Five.
