Public-Private Collaboration in Education: A New Development Model for Haiti

Leslie Fillion-Wilkinson and Carlo Dade

Contrary to the perception that Haiti is a development “basket case,” groundbreaking developments have recently occurred in Haitian education. In the fall of 2005, leaders of the progressive Haitian private sector, NGOs and international development officials met in Canada at Willson House, the official Canadian cabinet retreat at Meech Lake, for a meeting co-chaired by former Canadian Prime Minister Joe Clark and former Inter-American Development President Enrique Iglesias. Organized by FOCAL and the Inter-American Dialogue and funded by the Canadian International Development Agency and the Inter-American Development Bank, the meeting revolved around the role of the private sector in Haitian development and identified key priorities for action. In early 2007, the participants reconvened in Atlanta to hold focused discussions on education, which was identified at Meech Lake as a priority for public-private collaboration.

As opposed to elsewhere in the hemisphere, education in Haiti is already predominantly provided by the private sector. Approximately 85 per cent of schools are private, and the Ministry of Education has only 300 employees – including teachers – for a population of over 8.5 million people. Beyond this, most mid- and large-size enterprises in Haiti make substantial investments in education to supplement the lack of state resources. This engagement ranges from scholarships and building schools to providing school lunches and donating text books. While important, these idiosyncratic efforts have failed to have significant impact, partially due to lack of coordination and partially from the limited resources of the Haitian private sector.
Under what is now called the Willson House process, the Haitian private sector, donors and aid agencies came together to examine how the groups can cooperate to enhance the “development” investments being made by the private sector. As a result of the Atlanta Willson House meeting earlier this year, the most influential companies in Haiti agreed to focus their education work under the auspices of the UniBank Foundation and its president, Carl Braun.

This is the first time that the private sector has formally come together to examine what it can jointly contribute to Haitian development. In addition, this grouping of companies has reached out to involve other important private actors such as the Federation of Protestant Schools, the Catholic Community and the teachers’ union in discussing a consolidated effort towards specific targets.

In this regard, the private sector members of the consortium are working to develop three or four large-scale initiatives that the companies will agree to support and which will be presented to donors, most notably the Inter-American Development Bank, for joint financing and implementation. The larger grouping of participants in the consortium is meeting to discuss general issues of education policy and responses to government initiatives and new laws. In terms of influencing education reform in Haiti, this new coalition has the potential to make significant contributions. In a country that stands alone in the hemisphere for its scarcity of local development resources, including human and financial capital, the outcome of the Willson House process with education will be very important for Haiti.

There is certainly consensus among the dialogue’s participants regarding current education challenges in Haiti, the foremost being the issue of access. The cost of education is prohibitive for families. Most households spend upwards of 40 per cent of their annual income on school fees, a strain further compounded by the lost income incurred while children are in school.
Beyond the provision of education, the system is confronted by an obstacle of another order. The number of post-secondary graduates outstrips the supply of jobs requiring learned employees. In fact, what the existing market and growing industry need are specialized employees, but Haiti has very few institutions that provide the necessary vocational training.

Opinions diverge, however, as to the order in which these priorities must be tackled, and by whom. The public and private sectors each have their own resources, responsibilities and authority. Yet it is clear that both are indispensable in this undertaking to ensure access, equity and quality of education in Haiti. The Willson House process has proven extremely useful in allowing donors and the private sector to identify four priority areas for public-private collaboration. First, in recognition of its role in education, the private sector must be able to participate in policy making to act as a liaison between curriculum design and the needs of the job market.

Second, the state must increase its regulatory capacity in order to lend a strong, institutionalized framework to the education sector. Next, the parties must enhance the infrastructure for and amount of vocational training. Ultimately, resources must be combined and coordinated efficiently. In this vein, participants at the Atlanta meeting suggested a centrally-administered national fund to pool and distribute contributions from the private sector.

At present, the process that began in 2005 is now firmly in the hands of the Haitian private sector. It is a considerable breakthrough that the private sector has united behind the UniBank Foundation to concentrate their efforts on a few specific large-scale projects in education.
A final meeting is planned in the Haitian capital in 2008, where proposals will be presented for key programs to be co-funded with the Inter-American Development Bank. FOCAL, the Inter-American Dialogue and other key partners hope that the Willson House process will carry on and produce new development initiatives beyond education.

Leslie Fillion-Wilkinson is a project coordinator and associate editor at FOCAL. Carlo Dade is the Executive Director at FOCAL. This article is based on the reports produced after the Atlanta and Port-au-Prince meetings on private sector involvement in Haitian development. Leslie can be reached at lfillion-wilkinson@focal.ca and Carlo can be reached at cdade@focal.ca.