US Ambassador Bauer Eyes Youth Opportunities, Stronger Belize Ties

During his 14-minute interview, newly appointed ambassador André Bauer says he is ready to collaborate with the Government of Belize on initiatives aimed at strengthening bilateral relations and improving opportunities for young people. He discussed the responsibilities he is preparing to undertake and his desire to work with Belizean officials on projects that can improve the lives of young Belizeans. He says his initial focus will include meeting the country’s leaders, learning more about Belize’s priorities and identifying areas in which the United States can provide meaningful support.

André Bauer, U.S.Ambassador to Belize: “We all have opinions and different perspectives based on life experiences. The experiences I’ve seen and most of the people I’ve talked to feel very comfortable about the relationship between the two countries. Everybody’s entitled to their opinion, but I hope that I’ll be able to do even more, make them feel better about the relationship between the two countries. They’ll be able to judge me by my actions and the actions of what the United States tries to do to work together. And so people are always going to have opinions that differ from yours and hopefully I can, as the spokesperson for the president and someone who represents the United States, and is planning on being an integral part of this country, I hope do a better job of all I can to make people feel good about the relationship between the two countries and our bilateral relationship. I read in one of your posts just the other day, disappointing news about continued expansion of people using drugs. And that really concerns me because I know that path is not a good path to go down. And so I think we need to have a conversation of what can we do for the young people? How can we show them a path that that’s not the path they want to go down? We do that by opportunities. We do that by structure. We do that by having uncomfortable conversations. So a priority to me is what can we do as the United States government to help the youth and you have a disproportionate large number of youth.”