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80 women will partake in a series of beauty and entrepreneurial projects that will educate and train them on the basics of formalizing a business and learning new marketable skills. We spoke with the president of the NWC about this new partnership and programme.

Thea Garcia-Ramirez, President, National Women's Commission
"We have partnered with the government and the people of Taiwan and they have generously sponsored two of our programmes that empower women and aligned with attaining sustainable development goal number five which speaks to women equality and equity."

"That's one of the ways we empower women and so the wellness factor in that programme speaks to emotional wellness physical wellness and those are also important components. Wealth and wellness go together and then we have one teaching basic skills, manicures, pedicures and makeup application as part of building skills again and ensuring that we have a wide variety. So the first programme is for people who already have some small business established so that they can learn to price properly and that their profit margins are fair and so that they are not losing money and to learn to navigate the business world a bit better as well as personal finance."

This collaboration was built on a mutual interest to empower and encourage women to be more independent and confident as business owners. The Women's Commission holds that - even through micro-enterprise - women are the backbone of the economy. Each small enterprise, every product and service makes a difference in its own way. Taiwan's interest is to enhance the work and the reach of the NWC.

Hsin-Pei Hsieh, Project Manager
"The whole purpose of the project is that we hope by implementing the project we will be able to help the women especially the women in need and they don't really have the skills and they need the opportunity to get an education in other to support themselves. The origin of the project occurred during covid-19 time. And as you know that the Covid-19 has devastated the economy and social life worldwide and we found out especially women's livelihood. And that's why we want to start with the project by investing in women in Belize and we hope that we will help them get through these difficulties."

And will there be more opportunities like this in the future? Ramirez says that they try to diversify the programmes and try not to stick solely to one area, trade or service. She says that women possess an interest in different fields, so the commission tries to offer trainings that cater to different needs:

Thea Garcia-Ramirez, President, National Women's Commission
"It depends on the programme some of them will go six weeks some of them will go for 8 weeks in the north we had a vanilla cultivation project that ran almost two months and its still ongoing because vanilla cuttings take about two years to start to produce so we work with different partners in that case we worked with economic development and investment and so we try to find programmes that are out of because we are diverse and different women like different things."