Above: the new school

By the Caribbean Journal staff

Haiti President Michel Martelly officially inaugurated the new Is in Les Cayes on Monday.

The school is located on the former site of a base of United Nations peacekeepers from Senegal in what is Haiti’s third-largest metropolitan area.

Martelly was joined by Haiti Tourism Minister Stephanie Villedrouin, who has made hospitality training a major priority of her tourism development agenda.

It is the first school the government has opened outside of the capital, Port-au-Prince, whose hotel school was damaged in the 2010 earthquake but has since been revived.

In a statement, Villedrouin said the school sought to “support young people in the region by giving them the opportunity to train in a profession that can help them get a job.”