FFB President Calls for Public Support of Women Sports

FFB’s new national strategy lays out how the sport can grow, gain visibility, and finally give female athletes the support they’ve been denied for decades. But even the best strategy can only go so far without real backing. And that’s where the major gap still exists. FFB president Sergio Chuc says the business community’s investment has been minimal, and government support hasn’t come close to meeting the needs of women’s sports. He is making an unusually direct appeal, urging both sectors to step up, partner with the federation, and help build the infrastructure needed for Belize’s female athletes to truly advance.

 

Sergio Chuc, President, Football Federation of Belize

“I think over fifty percent of our population is female. And I’m sure they’re out there in TV land looking at us and pushing for what we are doing. And we want to ask the government to come closer and partner with us. Today we are happy that the Minister of Sports came to, to, to this presentation so that the CEO and hopefully we could get them on board. We have a master plan. As Philip mentioned earlier, the fifth pillar is infrastructure. We have a full master plan in place already that would cost a little over fourteen million US dollars. We already started on the construction, but we only have financing to go maybe halfway, and then it’ll be stuck there.”

 

Shane Williams

“And how about support from the business community?”

 

Sergio Chuc

“From the business community? It is not what we expect. It’s very minimal. Same thing I would say from the government of Belize. Direct injection into the national teams, it’s very minimal. Apart from we use their facilities when they trained regionally, but most of our training is done at our facility. So the support is minimal. And maybe I want to take this opportunity right now to lobby with the government of Belize to get more involved, especially when it comes to female football.”