Partners of the Americas will hold convention in Bz.
Partners of the Americas is a network of volunteer organizations in the United States, Latin America and the Caribbean. For forty years Belize has partnered with the U.S. State of Michigan. It is this joint venture that is responsible for the establishment of the 4-H Centre in Belmopan and a series of service oriented projects in health, agriculture, education, culture and sports.
These accomplishments will be spotlighted in November, when the Partners of the Americas International Convention will, for the first time, be hosted in Belize. Preparatory work has been underway for a year and today International Coordinator Barbara Bloch and the local president Dr. Chris Bennett offered a preview of the upcoming event.
Jacqueline Godwin, Reporting
?How would you describe the working relationship between Michigan and Belize??
Barbara Bloch, Coordinator of Special Events/Training
?I would tell you quite good. There are always up and down moments in any volunteer organization, but currently the communications have been terrific. There has been a lot of activity. One of the things we hope to accomplish at this convention, not only to do networking with all the members that will be coming from Central America, South America and Brazil and other Caribbean Islands and the U.S., is to promote the partnership between Belize and Michigan. So when we leave they hopefully will have recruited some new interests and have some new projects.?
Dr. Chris Bennett, President, Belize Michigan Partners
?So we can foresee a greater fostering of friendship. Perhaps lasting relationships between individual partners, members, and of course the main thing we wanted to do is to promote Belize. So we hope to give a big exposure of Belize to this convention.?
?Barbara is here really to make sure that we have things in place. But we have our sub committees working, like I said, for a year and a half and I think she is quite pleased. Her work is much less than in previous conventions so we have everything all geared and just waiting for people to come.?
Presently the Belize Michigan Partners are looking to increase the organisation’s membership, which now stands at twenty-five.
