Leadership Without Borders Empowers Young Belizeans
This morning, students from across St. John’s College’s high school, junior college, and university divisions gathered for another installment of the institution’s Leadership Without Borders initiative, a program designed to connect young Belizeans with leaders from various fields. The featured guest was U.S. Ambassador to Belize André Bauer, who shared lessons from his personal and professional journey, encouraging students to embrace discipline, seek mentorship, and develop the skills needed to become effective leaders in their communities. Following the event, we caught up with Bauer, who stressed that investing in young people today can help shape a stronger and more engaged Belize tomorrow.
Andre Bauer
Andre Bauer, US Ambassador to Belize
“ What a blessing to be invited here today, especially when you get to share a little bit about your faith. it shaped my life and, and really brought me to where I am. But also having to have an impact, hopefully, on young people to get to share a little bit of the road traveled here and hopefully have an impact to where some of the decisions they make are because of different speakers that the president has brought in here to try to give them some guidance. Maybe some of the potholes along the way that I found myself in, hopefully you can share a little wisdom and they’re able to avoid a few of those things. And to have this type of format to bring people in, you get to share the entire group stayed focused the whole time, which meant they had interest. And so, I’m glad that I could give them a little nugget on life. I’ve got a lot of lumps on my head that I hope the next person maybe doesn’t have to take quite as many. I’ve been very, very blessed. But this is really, out of all the things I do in being an ambassador, getting the exchange with other people, especially people that are trying to better themselves, It means a lot to me.”
Britney Gordon
“What is the best piece of advice you can give to youths that want to be leaders in their community?”
Andre Bauer
“Well, I give several things, but the big things to me are discipline, structure, and guidance. If you have discipline in your life, no matter what you do, if you do it well, people will take note. Guidance, you always wanna strive to find people that have done things that you wanna emulate, to seek wisdom from them. And so structure and guidance and discipline to me are the big things that really make, no matter what field you’re in, you better. Whether you’re an athlete, whether you’re a professional, whether you’re a politician, whether you’re a college president. She didn’t get to be college president by doing things haphazardly or cutting corners.”
Bauer emphasized that achieving meaningful goals is a gradual process that requires learning from those who have already walked the path.
Attention readers: This online newscast is a direct transcript of our evening television broadcast. When speakers use Kriol, we have carefully rendered their words using a standard spelling system.