By the Caribbean Journal staff

The World Bank has launched a new initiative aimed at providing vocational training for young women in Haiti.

The Adolescent Girls Initiative looks to foster economic independence among 12,000 young girls and young women in Haiti by providing non-traditional vocational training.

The training will involve areas such as work ethics, self-confidence and professional conduct.

The women will receive a stipend to be paid via a mobile banking system to cover the cost of transport and other expenses.

In Haiti, where people under the age of 30 account for roughly 70 percent of the population, adolescent girls and young women from poor homes have greater difficulties in fiddling their first job than boys with the same educational level, according to the World Bank.

“The Adolescent Girls Initiative contains community, educational and professional components to address the challenges young girls are facing in Haiti, and thus to improve their social and economic conditions,” said Sheyla Durandisse, chief of staff for Haiti’s Ministry for Women’s Affairs and Women’s Rights.

The training will be carried out in neighborhoods in Port-au-Prince, with 500 trainees in 2012 and another 500 in 2013.

The AGI, which was first launched in 2008 in Liberia, is a $22 million global initiative already underway in several countries, including Nepal, Rwanda and South Sudan.