As I return from my second trip to Haiti - and first with the Global Partnership - it remains hard to accept that a mere two hour flight away from the shores of the United States lies an island nation whose people live on the very edge of survival. They greatly need our support.

Haiti is recovering from the massive earthquake of January 12, 2010 that destroyed large parts of Port au Prince, the capital, and left many Haitians homeless, without access to food and water, and without access to education. Almost exactly five years after the tragedy, I was able to witness how far the country has come to remove mountains of rubble, rebuild and ensure that displaced populations could find new homes.

During the few days I spent in Haiti, I met with the minister of education and development partners, visited schools and talked to teachers, students and school administrators about their needs, hopes and challenges.

The key message I heard everywhere is the eagerness of Haitians for education, despite its cost. Indeed, the public education offering in Haiti is limited, and public schools represent only about 15% to 20% of all schools. This situation is due to many years of under-development, political crises, conflict and natural disasters. So the private sector has jumped in, providing a wide array of schools, from for-profit institutions to faith-based schools, with varying fees, curricula and vastly different levels of quality.

A strong will to educate

I met a number of remarkable people during my visit. For example, Soeur Lucie, director of an all-girls school in St Marc. She had decided to close her school the day of our visit because of protests the day before, during which demonstrators had tried to force their way into the school to ask students to join the strike. I could tell the decision to close the school had not been an easy one for her, but she had no other choice to ensure her students' safety.

There was also Hervé Jean Baptiste, director of the College Mixte Joinvil in Port au Prince. Mr. Jean Baptiste is not a teacher by education, but an engineer. However, together with a few motivated friends, he opened this school to offer an opportunity to students in his neighborhood.

He said that many students from poor families are not able to pay the school tuition, but he accepts them anyway. “We have to help them”, he said. His school benefits from the tuition-waiver program financed by the project.

Finally, I remember a man who stood up during a community meeting in Nancroix, a remote village close to the border with the Dominican Republic. Speaking in Creole, he passionately made a plea for the new school promised by the government in their village, and explained that he and others in the community were willing to stop working for as long as necessary to build the school once the materials arrived.

How the Global Partnership is helping Haiti

At the Global Partnership, we are doing our part to support Haiti: our first grant of US$22 million approved in 2008 was quickly re-allocated after the 2010 earthquake to respond to immediate needs: the funds were used to finance grants to pay teacher wages while the country was rebuilding, and tuition waivers to allow more than 83,000 children to attend schools. Thanks to the grant, 2,800 schools received one-time grants allowing them to re-open and pay teachers, and more than 60,000 students received meals at schools from 2010 to 2012.

With a new grant of US$24.1 million, the Global Partnership will continue to provide tuition waivers to allow more than 100,000 children to attend school this school year and 35,000 next year. We will also continue to support the school feeding programs to support 34,000 students.

Despite an ongoing teachers’ strike, I was grateful that Mr. Nesmy Manigat, Haiti’s Minister of Education and Vocational Training, found time to talk to me and our UNESCO and World Bank partners about his key priorities for the coming months. It is important to note that during a recent cabinet reshuffle in Haiti, he is one of the few ministers who kept his post.

In his view, a key impediment to moving the education sector forward is the poor quality of learning. He advised that only 3 of every 100 children complete secondary school without repeating classes. The rest either do not ever go to school or drop out at some point. He said: “It is urgent and crucial for us to fully reform the curriculum offered to our children, from preschool to high school”.

Fragile and conflict-affected countries need targeted support

The Minister is keen to engage with development partners to find solutions, including through curriculum reform and a solid accreditation process, both for teachers in non-public schools, and for non-public schools. Schools have recently received identity cards and have been granted two years to comply with the law: they must file an accreditation request, complying with set criteria such as a complete list of teachers and profiles of their directors and teachers.

Haiti is one of 28 countries out of a total of 60 supported by the Global Partnership that are in a situation of fragility or coming out of conflict. These countries face special and additional challenges on the way to development, and that’s why our partnership has developed specific policies to support them. GPE provides technical assistance to such countries to develop a transitional education plan when they are unable to prepare a comprehensive long term strategy.

GPE also responds quickly to emergency situations by facilitating quick reallocation of GPE grants to tackle the most pressing issues, as was done in Haiti after the earthquake.

I left Haiti encouraged by the resilience of its people and its eagerness for education, inspired by the Minister’s keen focus on the most pressing challenges, but worried that five years following one of the worst humanitarian crises in history, the international community is turning its attention away from a country still in dire need of external support.