As the 2026 academic year kicks off across Haiti, thousands of low-income households continue to grapple with the rising financial burden of purchasing school supplies for their children. To address this persistent annual challenge, Haiti’s Economic and Social Assistance Fund (FAES) has launched a nationwide distribution initiative, and has already delivered 30,500 supply kits to students in need across four of the country’s departments. The ongoing operation expanded to two new regions on Tuesday, September 8, 2026, marking another key milestone in the program’s rollout. Early that morning, FAES teams transferred 6,500 pre-assembled school kits to the Departmental Emergency Operations Center (COUD) based in Fort-Liberté, which serves Haiti’s Northeast department. Just hours later, a second shipment of 7,500 kits was delivered to the COUD facility in Vaudreuil, located in the country’s northern department of Cap-Haitien. These latest deliveries push the total number of kits distributed across the country since the initiative launched on September 6 to 30,500. All collected supplies will be passed from regional COUD offices to local public high schools and national public primary schools, which will handle final redistribution directly to targeted students and their families. FAES designed the program with two core goals in mind: first, to guarantee that every participating child starts the school year with the basic materials they need to participate in class, and second, to cut down on the crippling back-to-school expenses that push many vulnerable households further into financial instability. The initiative covers five of Haiti’s most underserved departments: Artibonite, Northwest, Northeast, North, and Centre, with plans to expand to the Greater South region once initial rollouts are complete. The distribution campaign first launched in Artibonite on Sunday, September 6, where FAES handed over 10,000 kits to local education representatives shortly after the launch event. The following days brought a 6,500-kit shipment to the Departmental Directorate of Education (DDE) for the Northwest department, before the operation moved to the Northeast and North regions this week. As of mid-September, the mission remains ongoing. After wrapping up distribution logistics in the four already reached departments, FAES deployment teams will shift their focus to the Centre department, before moving onward to serve communities in the Greater South region in the coming weeks. For low-resource families that struggle to cover basic monthly expenses, each full school kit represents far more than a collection of notebooks and writing utensils: it is critical, timely relief that eliminates one major line item from their back-to-school budget, at a time when education-related costs are rising steadily across Haiti. For students, the kits also address a key barrier to equal access to education: many low-income children have previously been forced to start the school year without basic supplies, putting them at an immediate disadvantage compared to their peers from higher-income households. For Haiti’s most vulnerable communities, the back-to-school season is never just a routine transition. It is an annual financial shock that many households working with limited incomes struggle to absorb. By directly targeting this unmet need with targeted on-the-ground assistance, FAES’s initiative aims to remove one critical barrier to education access, making the start of the new school year a little more equitable and accessible for the children and families that need support the most.
Social : 30,500 kits already distributed by FAES to the most vulnerable families.
