On Thursday, April 2, 2009, Commissioner Sarah Wescot-Williams signed several agreements with USONA for funding in the areas of education and capacity building for the island government in relation to the future country St. Maarten
Present were the Dutch representative, based in St. Maarten, and from USONA the Dutch funding agency, Director Frans Versteeg.
Commissioner Wescot-Williams welcomed everyone and thanked the Dutch representatives, saying that we are here to sign off on some important projects in the field of Education and strengthening the Government Administration.
The Educational agreements were for projects in Compulsory Education (Naf. 427,000), a comprehensive study that is to take an accurate account of the undocumented situation on St. Maarten, concerning the undocumented students, these schools, and their capabilities; this study is to take place before the implementation of compulsory education.
The second project (Naf. 95,000) concerns the formerly known project as the Social Formation, now called St. Maarten Youth Program, aimed at helping Highschool drop outs or assisting young people acquire additional education so that they may enter into a SBO program.
The third Educational project concerns the Foundation Based Education (Naf. 13 million) and is geared towards 4 schools and increasing their compliance in relation to FBE standards, including the building of a SBO school in Cay Hill.
The other aspect of the funding project is for the strengthening the administration of government in different the new Ministries in relation to the future Country St. Maarten; there will be 19 persons hired, some of which has been referred to as critical vacancies. The amount for this project is Naf. 3.1 million for a period of 26 months.