WASHINGTON, USA (CMC) — The Creative Cultural and Economic Development Programme for Portmore, St Catherine, is among 50 projects and institutions from 26 Latin America and the Caribbean selected to receive financing and technical assistance from the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB).

The Washington-based financial institution said Jamaica and seven other other Caribbean Community (Caricom) countries — The Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Guyana, Haiti, Jamaica, Suriname, and Trinidad and Tobago — will receive grants under its Cultural Development Programme, designed to support artistic and creative endeavours.

It said the grants were awarded to “innovative projects for technical training, art, music and theatre instruction for educators.

“Taking into consideration the diversity of these cultural disciplines, the projects were evaluated for their viability, educational scope, effective use of resources, ability to mobilise additional sources of financing, and long-term impact on the community,” the IDB said.

This year, the IDB said its cultural centre received 1,004 proposals from which 513 were pre-selected by the IDB country offices.

“It is important to emphasise the fact that the cultural centre and the country offices become working partners with the institutions responsible for implementing the projects,” the IDB said.

“Both work together to supervise, monitor and guide the projects to achieve optimum results,” it added.

Apart from the Portmore programme, the IDB said the following Caribbean institutions and projects were awarded grants:

• Dance Bahamas School;

• Barbados Association Drama Educator;

• The Global Parish Project (Belize);

• University of Guyana’s School of Education and Humanities, Department of Language and Cultural Studies;

• Compagnie NIFE (Haiti);

• Foundation Warappakreek (Suriname);

• Surinamese Orphanages (Suriname); and

• The Diego Martin Emancipation Celebrations

Committee (Trinidad and Tobago).