[Fwd: BELIZE: Community groups encouraged in tourism]

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: BELIZE: Community groups encouraged in tourism
Date: 30 Sep 2004 16:34:16 -0000
From: jayne@sidsnet.org
To: tourism-newswire@sidsnet.org

Community groups encouraged in tourism

30 September, 2004

Belize has joined three other countries, namely Guatemala, Costa Rica,
and Brazil in an effort aimed at giving small community groups a chance
to co-exist with the larger, better financed interests in the tourism
industry. According to officials of the local partner, Programme for
Belize, the idea is to show people, particularly those in rural
communities, how to use what they have in their immediate surroundings
to their economic benefit, while at the same time ensuring that future
generations will be able to build on those efforts. National Coordinator
of the programme, Anselmo Castenada, says it's a forward-thinking
approach to tourism.

Anselmo Casteneda, Nat’l Coord., Sustainable Tourism Certification
Programme
“This project works at three levels basically. At the national level we
are going to be giving technical assistance. We are going to be giving
capacity building and also training people how to be certified and
eventually, around year three or four, we are going to be marketing at
least twenty Belizean small and medium enterprises that are involved in
nature-based tourism.”

Denya Delvalle, Mesoamerican coordinator, Rainforest Alliance
“We are now in Belize starting with the training of trainers programme
with the certification and best management programme that we are running
with our local partner Programme for Belize, and we have twenty-one
participants from all over the country. They are receiving some
techniques on adult education and also on best management practice and
certification. That’s the objective of this first workshop that we are
running again with Programme for Belize.”

The best practices and certification in sustainable tourism programme is
a five million US dollar project, with the Inter American Development
Bank providing three million. The remaining two million is raised by the
participating countries.

SOURCE: Belize TV Channel 5

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Received on Thu Sep 30 15:24:19 2004