Belize Fund and UB Renew Collaboration Commitments with MOU

Today, the University of Belize and the Belize Fund for a Sustainable Future formalized a strategic partnership with the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding. It is designed to deepen collaboration on community capacity building, research, and training for the institution, building on the university’s long-standing role as a board member and early grantee of the fund. Doctor Leandra Cho-Ricketts, Executive Director at the Belize Fund, shares more details on how the partnership will help shape the future on conservation in Belize

 

Dr. Leandra Cho-Ricketts, Executive Director, B.F.S.F.

“We’ve identified them as a key partner in helping the fund be able to have the right information or data to inform where we invest. So for example, when we are looking at marine protected area management, ensuring that all the data is being collected and that is being analyzed effectively to inform management and where the university has a key role to play there, we believe is in terms of helping to train co-managers on how to analyze data on how to interpret it. And also in terms of sharing that these outputs, so analyze data, present it in a way that’s meaningful, that’s readily accessible to fishers, to the tourism sector tour guides, on the state of our marine resources. So that’s one area capacity building. So they, they would be training co-managers, but they’d also be looking at developing targeted training programs to support communities, especially where we see the biggest gap relating to their institutional governance. So whether it’s a small business, whether it’s a fishing association or a women’s group, just being able to cohesively put in operators as a entity and put in place policies, procedures there, how they make their decisions, how they communicate. So those basic things are missing. It could be a whole program developed by the university or more targeted courses.”