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A panel of 5 students presented their priority issues for Belize in 2025, as part of an open forum held by the University of Belize titled "Elections and You in 2025: Exercising Your People Power."

The students had 5 minutes each to present their opinions on an issue of their choice, and how elections and our government system has a significant impact on each one. The Director for the Belize Policy Research Institute says that the purpose of this discussion is to give students a chance to voice perspectives as to why they deserve a seat at the table when it comes to finding solutions for these issues.

Dylan Vernon, Director, Belize Policy research institute, UB
"There were diverse presentations on tourism education, health, legislature, women in politics and they all had something very new and useful to say coming from youth voices. But one of the things I found most interesting was that question of how to engage more youths and they themselves were putting the pressure on themselves but also answering the questions and basically saying that part of it is perhaps the wrong question is how do we the youths engage you? And the answers to that has to do with techniques you use: social media. The turnout today was not as great as we want when it comes to students we were live streaming it but it is our hope that the event is not going to be the last one and that some of the materials from it will form a publication at some point in time."

Once the students have presented then they receive feedback from 3 selected respondents. The Director for the Intercultural Indigenous Language institute says the discussions are meant to provoke thinking on what Belize's future could be like decades from now.

Delmer Tzib, Director, intercultural indigenous language institute, UB
"The discussion today came about after thinking that we need to open more spaces for the public to voice their concerns and also for the youths in particular to have a say in what they feel are national issues and also what they see as the future of Belize. I think one of the rationalisations that I had one night was I was just thinking well what will Belize be in perhaps 20 years from now we are living today, what changes we need to put in place today and the discussions we should be having to inspire change. We should be engaging with so at the university we are the national university of Belize we have a responsibility as well to engage the youths and offer the youths a voice so that's really how it came about."

"Another thing that also sprung up to me was where one of the presenters was basically making a call for national development and just to stick a pin there. Our national movements started with open forums like these. Talking out the issues that were plaguing the society at that point and also figuring out what suggestions what exists out there what do we have that can contribute towards national development and really that's one of the major messages that I get from here that many of these students are interested in contributing and changing our Belize for good and part of that is how do we inspire them? And inspiring them can be through some of these same open forums."

History Student Jayden Coleman who presented on "Improving our governance system" told us why he chose this issue of interest to discuss:

Jayden Coleman, History student UB
"I was really glad to be invited here but the first thing they told me was that it was not a debate it was more your opinion and I wanted to share my opinion on the people who do not vote, the people who don't feel a need to go out and exercise their right to vote, their right to suffrage I want to show them to sort of influence them to think of how that tramples our nationalist legacy this was not always a right and what we have right now it is important that we maintain it. It's important that we lead the state to do what they want to do because in time what that will evolve into is a totalitarian state and I won't be a doomsayer to say we are very close to that compared to other nations but it's still a very near possibility."

"I think when you vote you are voting for, well at least this is the idea, you try to vote for someone who plans to implement a part of what you identify as yourself in the game plan that is Belize. So when you choose not to vote you choose not to be a part of that process and not being apart of that process means you leave it for other people to do what they want and a very serious issue we have in Belize and what I said in my speech was I have no proof of course and no one has ever been convicted of it but it's that people are paid to vote in one way or another and Dr, it was Mr Dennison I believe said that the people who are paid to vote or who choose to take these bribes are playing with the tools in their tool box and he is very right in that, but I also want to think and you can call this the naivety of youth but I also want to think about the people who are from an underprivileged who are all in an underprivileged situation and who choose not to vote and who choose not to take bribes why are these people doing what they are doing? Where did we go wrong? What part of Belize do they not see in themselves? So you know that's just something that I wanted to look at and it's a very serious issue and I think it needs to be addressed."