WASHINGTON, DC -The World Bank’ has approved additional grant financing of US$90 million to Haiti for the Promoting a More Equitable, Sustainable and Safer Education Project (PROMESSE), expected to benefit an estimated 150,000 students.
The bank said that 69,000 girls would also benefit from the project to support targeted interventions to help at least 1,500 girls stay and advance in school.
“The World Bank is committed to helping Haiti overcome the multi-faceted effects caused by the political, social, and economic uncertainty, coupled with the devastating impact of the 2021 earthquake and other natural disasters.
“One urgent need is a coordinated medium-term approach to transforming the Education sector as the average Haitian student is only retaining a total of 6.1 years of schooling when adjusted for quality,” said Laurent Msellati, World Bank Country Manager for Haiti.
“This additional financing constitutes a further investment in human capital to support the government’s effort to improve learning outcomes by building a more equitable, modern, and resilient education system, as well as putting children back to school in the Southern Peninsula affected last year. By the Earthquake.”
The additional financing of US$90 million from the International Development Association (IDA) includes US$40 million from the IDA Crisis Response Window (CRW) that will enable the continuity of schooling in areas affected by the August 2021 earthquake.
The funds will reconstruct and rehabilitate school infrastructure and provide nutritional support and improved learning conditions for children. The project will support 262 public schools by funding grants to support their operations, the delivery of kits with teaching and learning materials, training and support to teachers and administrators, and help to students’ reading in early grades.
The project will also support access to 126 non-public primary schools and improve their teaching and learning environment through a results-based tuition waiver financing mechanism. Furthermore, The financing will be used to enhance infrastructure investment planning and upgrade permanent school infrastructure in the longer term to ‘build back better with improved earthquake and climate change resilience.
The school infrastructure plans will include gender sensitivity and accessibility for persons with disabilities, planting trees on school campuses to promote water infiltration and natural shade and cooling, and the use of water-efficient technologies and renewable energy.
Promoting an Efficient Education System in Haiti Project, the parent project was a US$15.6 million project funded by the Global Partnership for Education to improve the Ministry of Education’s planning and regulatory functions and the learning assessment system.
The additional funding will bring the total project amount to US$105.6 million and will build upon the parent project’s efforts to strengthen the capacity of the Ministry at the central and departmental levels and support data collection to inform better decision-making, in synergy with the school-level supports mentioned above.
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