Vendors in Training For BTL Park Booths
Today the Belize City Council, along with CARILED and the Small Business Development Centre began five-day training for persons who have applied to occupy the B.T.L Park kiosks. The training, as Mayor Darrell Bradley shared, covers Business Operations Management, Customer Service, Marketing, Recording Keeping, and Accounting and a total of 42 applicants being trained.
DARRELL BRADLEY
“They are being trained in various aspects of business management, financing, putting together a project proposal, marketing, product development and customer service so they understand the difficulty of being in a business and they understand what commitment and dedication is needed and so that their project is sustainable. The BTL park is right on schedule; it’s going to be launched on December 7 and all of these applicants will be placed somewhere in BTL Park or along the water front and we are looking for an exciting launch. We have coordinated with persons who are going to provide fireworks; we have people who are going to provide music and different things like that, so it’s going to be a fun activity to launch this park for residents and the people of Belize City. The applicants were selected through an application process. Everyone in here is in here just by them applying; every person who applied is here and we have committed because the business ideas were so good that we are going to place every person who applied. The application was done by way of advertisement in all major newspapers and that was done in the months of September and October. The ending of October we had a close off period; we did an additional vetting as we needed some additional information from some of the applicants. We had a meeting with all the applicants to explain to them what was going to happen, going forward in terms of the selection process, the training and so one of the things that I really liked about the BTL Park Project is that it’s very people centered. Before we did anything with the phase 3 component of the park, we met with the original 9 vendors we formed them into a legal association. The City Council paid for them to get an independent legal attorney and we are working with them in training and other things. We are coordinating very closely with this organization, their taking a leadership role; we are working with our partners like the Small Business Development Center, like CARILED, like the other large groupings of vendors in the area to ensure that everybody is giving their input, even residents who live in that community, so that the park is really something for all of us to enjoy.”
The Park is supposed to be opened on December seventh and the highlight being planned for that opening is fireworks.
belizeinvest.net 