European Union means well, but is offering the wrong kind of SCHOLARSHIP GRANTS to educate people here in Belize!

EUROPEAN UNION OFFERS SCHOLARSHIP GRANTS FOR STUDENTS THROUGH THE UNIVERSITY OF THE WEST INDIES AND LOCALLY THROUGH OUR GOVERNMENT OWNED UNIVERSITY OF BELIZE

The GRANT SCHOLARSHIPS I notice are for only MASTERS AND DOCTORATES. Queer that, we see that a lot from Foreign countries AID programs. They always offer them for Masters and Doctorates. Belize has a surplus at the moment of such people with Masters and Doctorate degrees, if complaints in the local media are to believed? Complaining of the lack of salaried jobs for bureaucratic administrator types, such as this. Salaried administrative clerk, bureaucrats do not build our export GDP economy. They are parasites,dragging our country down with worthless local education. All we are doing is educating people to export our citizens, in the BRAIN DRAIN skills. Waste of money to Belize!
The only country offering practical EDUCATION with scholarship grants, that BELIZE requires right now, seems to be MEXICO, in the more middle level technical fields. Taiwan has done some in the past and I believe CUBA is educating some of our citizens in the medical fields.
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WHAT BELIZE NEEDS RIGHT NOW IS MIDDLE LEVEL EDUCATION IN SPECIALTY SKILLS. SHORT TERM EDUCATION, LIKE THREE MONTHS, TWO EVENINGS A WEEK TYPE SPECIALTY CERTIFICATIONS. I remember my younger years. For eight years, I would finish my winter tourist season just after the high Easter tourist rush on Caye Caulker, and head out to Miami to build up my USA Social Security, with 5 months of work for the Dade County PARKS and RECREATION, as a SWIMMING POOLS MANAGER. Each Spring, I had to renew my certifications for Swimming Instructor, Lifeguard, CPR and First Aid. Annual exams for recertification. My STATE POOL OPERATORS LICENSE was good for a lifetime. Still have it. More needed for Insurance requirements for the inevitable lawsuits the County government would get, when there was an accident, or drowning. Anyway, I would invest in my 3 months of night school certifications, then the County PARKS AND RECREATION would process me and hire me for getting 4 swimming pools ready out of the many they had. Painting them and that sort of thing. Training a bunch of new, summer time Life Guards, hiring and so on, for pools and beaches.
Right now in Belize we need these short, specialty skill certifications. We need people short term certified in lathe work, CNC lathes computer instructed and parts designing on 3 D computer programs, or wiring generators and alternators to requirements of specialty tasks, aluminum TIG welding, steam engines-pressure and boiler setups and safety releases, grinding crankshafts and making pistons. We need people trained in the skill of foundry work, cottage industry hobby scale, with different metals. Making of molds in GREEN SAND containers, to make metal parts. We also need people that can make molds, with Dupont rubber latex type molds and castings, to make parts of plaster of paris, or to make plastic things. We need people familiar with clay sculpture, expoxy mold building and thermo ovens production. ( Kitchen table type industry ) BELIZE EDUCATION needs orientating our EDUCATION SHORTAGES, on LIGHT INDUSTRIAL MANUFACTURING. Like making and installing and operating food processing machinery, especially the packaging. You should be able to manufacture a small kitchen type tea bag, filling machine here in Belize for making of export HERBAL TEAS. I nearly ordered one from India a couple of years ago, to copy. ( $1200 usa ) We need people used to do lithography, making chocolate cardboard boxes, or cardboxes for various food products. At the moment I´m waiting to make a trip to Guatemala City, to make the rounds of LITHOGRAPHERS as I would like to make and design my own chocolate boxes, or Ginger biscuit boxes and rolls. We need an expansion of our limited injection molding plastic bottles, jars and tops. Most of this type of education is SELF TAUGHT right now. Trial and error, by guess and by golly. I can remember the main part of my youthful years, designing and building boats, up to 50 feet length. Designed and built more than a dozen, as a self taught MARINE ARCHITECT. Had to watch shipwrights, ask questions, read books, to learn to loft frames, or make wood models used to make curved frames for boat hulls, run different scale drawings, and design boats in wood, fiberglass and cement. Fiberglass expensive machinery for spray and stuff was more difficult, because if you wasted the product it was EXPENSIVE. The instruction book in one hand and the spray gun and cut fiberglass feeding roll in the other, down at Arthur Hoares, Coordinated Dockyard in Belize City the port. It would have sure helped to take a short certification course, which was not available then and is not available now either in Belize. Big bottleneck in turning our economy around to light manufacturing industry exports. I remember going to Miami to buy Philip Goldson an airplane for campaigning in 1960. I took 5 hours of dual pilot training, which is all I could afford, then buying the books and learning to fly and navigate on my own, as I went, flying with an instruction book in one hand, or lying on the seat next to me. We are currently building planes in Belize of the Ultra Light variety.
The European Union have a couple of million Euros, BELIZE could probably use some, for EDUCATION, but our NEED IN BELIZE, is this short term certifications, in specialty manufacturing skills. The last thing we need is more academic, paper waving, desk bound bureaucrats. We have a surplus already for our population size. Maybe our University of Belize academics like Dr. Cary Fraser will meet at the consortium in TOBAGO next week and put in a plea to re-direct the application of this EU GRANT program, for Masters and Doctorates, to more fitting uses in SKILLS orientated EDUCATION. EDUCATION HAS TO FIT THE DEVELOPMENT NEEDS OF BELIZE. We need so much in the SKILLS mid level EDUCATION, to build our nation and GDP of BELIZE. We also need the light machinery tools and educators who can QUICK TEACH this stuff. None of this type of EDUCATION exists in BELIZE at all, at this current time. Yet our need to foster and educate a new generation of people to be EXPORTERS, LIGHT MANUFACTURERS and ENTREPRENEURS, far surpasses the constant supply of GRANT SCHOLARSHIPS from the outside world for administrative, desk bound, bureaucrats in the civil service. EDUCATION HAS TO FIT THE NEEDS OF BELIZE AND BUILD OUR ECONOMY, or it is basically worthless and wasted. We are just exporting our people with MASTERS AND DOCTORATES to the outside world. THAT is not a valid education model for Belize at this stage of our population growth.
One of the imported skills education is the GIS technology. I notice that somebody in government is now offering the public GIS knowledge and performance. So it has taken 13 years to convert an introductory dream of mine, by government, to practical performance and education at this current time. Takes a long time, for a government to do anything pragmatic. We need to start these things now, because of the TIME LAG.