One year ago, BELTRAIDE launched its Small Business Development Center in Belize City. Since then, the walk-in agency has taken on 170 clients and disbursed 200 thousand dollars in assistance to small business start-ups. Today and event was held to mark the milestone, and Melanie Gideon who leads the project told us they are making strides, and making a difference:..

Melanie Gideon, SBDC Director
"A year later I think more and more entrepreneurs or people who think they are entrepreneurs or even business people have somewhere to go. It's a place where they can come and find not only refuge but know how. If you ask me if it is robust as a consequence, yeah, I am proud to say that. I think today you will showcase some entrepreneurs that without the center I am confident they wouldn't have been able to pull off what they've pull off."

Elaine Sutherland - "Ms. Elaine's Tambranero"
"Actually we did start to see in a little plastic bottle with a little label and some people from SBDC told us that it's a very good product but the packaging was terrible. So, with their encouragement, with their push we are here today. With their push we've change the label, we change the bottling. We work on how to launch it and how to present it to people."

Lyndon Sutherland - "Ms. Elaine's Tambranero"
"Most people say "boy, this thing looks like it's from the states or somewhere, it's so beautiful." People are drawn a lot because of the creativity and just the beauty of the layout. It has been well received. We have found that once people taste it, 9-10 people that taste it, want to come back to it."

Elaine Sutherland - "Ms. Elaine's Tambranero"
"It's a tambran based sauced mixed with habanero pepper and spices. It's a dipping sauce primarily which means you could dip anything you like; your fry chicken, fries, bar-b-que or whatever you want to dip in a sauce."

Lyndon Sutherland - "Ms. Elaine's Tambranero"
"To be an entrepreneur, it means that you have to design and create and you have to think outside the box and we have been forced to do that. It's a wonderful feeling because at end we see that we have brought a great value to a common product; tambram. People in Corozal who grow tambran could now sell us tambran and they could make income and send their kids to school. That a very satisfying feeling because we are contributing to the development of the our nation just because we have turned tambran into a high value product."

Melanie Gideon, SBDC Director
"For next year we anticipate that the load will go up and we want it to go up because we worked out a lot of kinks this year; how to execute our workshops, how to better advise, how to use the resources we have. That's how we've manage; it's just coming at every obstacle as an opportunity because at the end of the day it still needs to be done. At the end of the day Melanie Gideon, Deputy Executive Director still wants the center to produce and so the staff has been conditioned. So far, so excellent."

The SBDC very regularly has workshops for its clients ranging from accounting basics to social media networking.

Channel 7