Those were handed over today to a select number of Agriculture, Tourism, and creative sector micro small and medium enterprises. Jomarie Lanza attended the ceremony and here's what she learned about BEEP's first Cohort.

BELTRAIDE's Belize Enterprise Empowerment Project awarded seed funding to 29 outstanding MSME's that successfully completed the program's training. 14 of these businesses were start up enterprises while 15 of them were awarded under the export category. The executive director for BELTRAIDE says that the selection process for the project was competitive.

Ishmael Quiroz, Executive Director, BELTRAIDE
"So this is the first Seed Capital ceremony, under the Belize enterprise empowerment project and the journey had been really eye opening to see the interest first of all was incredible as we mentioned there were 279 applicants across the categories and so it was a tough job to fiddle it down to who you know provided complete applications and there after the progress was quite rigorous just looking at their concepts, understanding what it is that they are setting out to do and then of course short listing and the signing up for the pitch segment and so it has been inspirational. We have seen a variety of different Ideas and so it just speaks to the creativity that exists in the Belizean entrepreneurial landscape and so what's inspiring is the level of creatives that are actually putting forward ideas, women, women led businesses putting forward ideas and all in all just new ideas, new things that don't even exist in the Belizean market as yet or just very nascent and so that has been inspirational. Its been very tedious to have to spend many hours going through the concepts and the proposals and then fine tuning and providing feedback."

Quiroz says that they looked for viability, and well thought out concepts, aside from new emerging ideas. And with that they disbursed up to 370k in grant funding to today's awardees. Narda Garcia who sits on the BELTRAIDE board says that thanks to projects like BEEP, Belize's Orange Economy will continue to blossom.

Narda Garcia, CEO, Office of the Prime Minister
"To me the BEEP is a very comprehensive program that will give you yes seed money as a start up to grow or as a maturing company as we call which will be the second phase or as an export ready company."

"We also teach them to read and understand contracts because you get a contract from a resort, from a big resort they have lawyers and everything but you have to learn to read them and understand them so that you can comply the requirements of the contract so we thought that the orange economy can benefit from this and the orange economy from my standpoint and from I believe everybody's standpoint is so very crucial for the tourism industry."

We also spoke to two of the Awardees, David Daniel Smith, who caught the eye of of the judges through his Animation enterprise, and Jolie Pollard, ghe Owner of Ikooma A Belizean Seaweed haircare line which she plans to expand.

David Daniel Smith, In Awe Films
"So being in the creative sector, specifically the animation industry, it's been quite a journey. It's kind of exciting to see now that the Orange Economy is actually picking up in Belize but at first it has been a very difficult journey because a lot of people did not understand the industry or understand the work it takes also understand the quality the standard that we need to reach as well as the casting so it was pretty hard to convince people that at the beginning what I am doing is actually viable but seeing now that animation is actually a multi billion dollar industry its about time we get out share of the pie in this and its pretty exciting to see where we are going in the next steps forward."

Jolie Pollard, Ikooma
"So yeah I joined Beltraide that year and I was like man I should gave done this a long time ago and they have just been really helpful and that's how I found out about Beep and so I joined the program and they were, they guided us through the whole process and these people just went over and beyond for us and I shared this experience with many of the other entrepreneurs or advisors who were just there really wanting us to win and seeing potential in our businesses and I think this has been a very validating experience. I ams someone who started in my little kitchen just experimenting, going for my swims and trying to come up with something that's good for my hair and now here we are really feeling that we have something good to offer. And we should feel proud as Belizeans cause I mean here we are we are the lucky recipients out of the whole country and that says a lot and it's so encouraging."

According ot BELTRAIDE's CEO they will be putting out a call for 2 more cohorts under the project. 18 of those enterprises awarded today are owned by women.