Above: the Academy for Peace and Justice, a free secondary school in Haiti

By the Caribbean Journal staff

Haiti will soon receive a $50 million grant from the Inter-American Development Bank to be used for children’s education, the Bank announced.

The grant looks to improve education for as many as 360,000 children in Haiti, through the construction of new schools, tuition-free primary education, student health programmes and strengthening the Ministry of Education and Professional Training.

As part of the grant, 20 new schools will be built, benefiting a total of 8,200 children, the Bank said, from preschool through ninth grade.

The schools will feature libraries, sanitary facilities, a school canteen and energy and water systems. They will also be made accessible to disabled children. (For more on Haiti’s efforts to improve handicapped access, click here).

The grant will also subsidize education for 35,000 children attending non-primary public schools for a two-year period.

Haiti already has a tuition waiver programme for many students in the country, one that is financed by the government, the Caribbean Development Bank, CIDA, the Global Partnership for Education and the World Bank.

Haiti Prime Minister Laurent Lamothe told Caribbean Journal in an interview Wednesday that the government’s free education initiative had brought free schooling for almost 1.3 million children in Haiti.

Another component of the programme will fund bi-annual deworming campaign for 300,000 children. It will additionally support 100 schools which enroll 15,000 children in a “Hygiene Friendly” certification, aimed at improving health practices among Haiti’s youth.