World Bank Haiti Country Director addresses reconstruction in The Huffington Post

Yesterday on The Huffington Post, World Bank Haiti Country Director Yvonne Tsikata shared some of the work being done by the Bank in Haiti and a few thoughts on the Bank's larger, long-term commitment to the country:
 

Going forward, we would like to put special emphasis on the capacity generated by community-driven development projects, where people at the local level decide their priorities. We have supported a number of such initiatives going on in Haiti at the moment that have proven to be particularly successful on the basis of community involvement. This will be critical in the reconstruction.

Just to give an example, by May 2009 our community-driven initiative had completed 549 projects, primarily for agricultural support and other infrastructure -- including grain mills, water pumps, and local roads -- as well as income-generating activities. It provided technical support to 4,032 community-based organizations in rural areas, benefiting around 763,000 people in poor rural areas (or 57 percent of the population of the rural communities covered by the program).

 
Check out the full piece on The Huffington Post for more information on the Bank's work in Haiti and to engage in the discussion happening there.

Yvonne Tsikata is the World Bank Country Director for the Caribbean covering Antigua and Barbuda, The Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Grenada, Guyana, Haiti, Jamaica, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Suriname, and Trinidad and Tobago, in the Latin America and the Caribbean Region.