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Ten outstanding Belizean students received scholarships from the Belize Tourism Board and the Belize Hotel Association this morning at the Biltmore. 

These scholarships were established in 2005 and 2011 respectively. The BTB's scholarship aims to provide financial assistance to students interested in pursuing studies in tourism and hospitality, while the BHA's scholarship provides educational funding for the children of employees working with the BHA member hotels on the basis of financial need.  Here's more from the ceremony:

Hon. Manuel Heredia - Minister Of Tourism and Civil Aviation
"Let me say that tourism for me is the backbone of Belize at this point it is more or less 40% of the GDP of our country. So, you can see how important it is for government and for our Belizeans. This scholarships that are given is to achieve the standards of the students who want to achieve a higher education in different institutions and BTB and BHA have joined forces to make sure that we can give these 10 scholarships together which I believe will greatly improve the standards in Tourism and that is why the scholarships were initiated to make sure that we can train our students to make sure that when they are out they can give a better quality service to the industry, as you heard me a while ago saying that we are competing with many parts of the world and we have to be up to standard hence, we try to assist students so they can better their lives they can learn more about our industry, learn more about Belize and hence sell it to our tourists."

Herbert Haylock - Director, Quality Assurance and Industry Standards BTB
"There are four scholarship awards that are going to be issued one is for the culinary scholarship award that we give that is a yearly award. We give two Bachelor degree scholarships that we are going to give, which are tuition scholarships only and we also have the Jean Shaw scholarship award which is designated as such for the Jean Shaw remembrance for being a pioneer in the industry. So, that's the fourth scholarship award but that scholarship award as well covers tuition, it covers books and fees, so it's sort of an all-inclusive award."

Ruwani Badillo - Board of Directors, BHA
"We provide scholarships to students attending high school, 6th form and also universities. Of course it has to be in Belize. Right now we are actually issuing 6 scholarships. We have 5 for high school students and 1 for a UB student we've been doing this since 2011. It's been about we have about fifteen students that we've already helped over the years. Like I mentioned before we don't really discriminate against the subject area that you're studying as long as you are a child of an employee of one of the BHA member hotels or businesses. So for all 6 scholarships the total is $9000."

Cherisse Halsall
"But individually?"

Ruwani Badillo
"Individually we do cap it at about 1500 each to make it fair across."

Jennifer Padilla - Jean Shaw scholarship recipient
"I feel very fortunate that I receive this scholarship and well, I'm so thankful for BTB for helping me getting this scholarship. I really wasn't expecting to get this scholarship but I'm really thankful that I'm the only female who receive this scholarship here and well I'm just going to give it my best to keep up with this scholarship and this is a great thing that BTB is doing for the community for us students who cannot afford their studies and I'm so grateful because I really needed this help."

Kira Williams - BHA Scholarship recipient
"I'm currently in my second year so, I have two years to go and I've been on the scholarship since my first year in high school at SCA."

Reporter
"What are some of your plans for after you finish your bachelor's degree?"

Kira Williams
"After I complete my bachelors I plan to go as far as I can with my education but not only that I've seen myself that I want to be someone that give back and with what I'm studying I've decided that I want to work with the government but also open something to help with kids."

One of the BTB's scholarship awardees is the recipient of the Jean Shaw scholarship which was established by the BTB to support the development of qualified Belizean females pursuing a career in tourism.  This scholarship covers tuition, books, and fees.