CHASE Fund Approves More Than $133 Million for Early Childhood Sector Since January

The Culture, Health, Arts, Sports and Education (CHASE) Fund has approved just over $133 million in funding to support the early childhood sector since the start of the calendar year.

Chief Executive Officer (CEO), W. Billy Heaven, made the announcement while addressing a Jamaica Information Service (JIS) Think Tank, on July 22.

“We have provided about 2,000 scholarships since the start of the Fund in 2002 and approximately $830 million for training. We will continue this year to do more of the same along these lines, because we have not yet satisfied the needs that are out there for this support,” Mr. Heaven said, while reiterating the organisation’s commitment to robustly supporting the island’s early childhood education sector.

Since its inception, the CHASE Fund has approved $7.1 billion in support of the early childhood sector.

“That’s a significant amount. Equipping and upgrading the buildings of early-childhood institutions is one of several categories which account for the $7.1 billion spent, to date. We started out by focusing on infant and basic schools. We have made some adjustments since then, but we are still out there creating that impact,” the CEO told JIS News.

“When we started the organisation, we realised that equipping institutions with the relevant infrastructure was one of the greatest areas of need. The focus remains there because the infrastructure challenges still persist,” he added.

Mr. Heaven noted that assistance is also provided for training educators at the early-childhood level, as well as for ensuring proper nutrition for students.

To date, the Fund has constructed more than 80 early-childhood institutions at a cost of $2.3 billion and upgraded another 900 facilities at a cost of $2.6 billion.

Mr. Heaven highlighted that the Fund’s impact extends across the entire island, with project implementation guided by population density in each parish.

The CHASE Fund receives its resources through the Consolidated Fund and allocates 25 per cent of its budget to early-childhood education.