 Coming to you from our TIS Studios, I am Anisia Antoine and this is your midday news brief. A team of experts on gender mainstreaming has ended an inception mission in St. Lucia as the government of St. Lucia moves to ensure gender equality in its plans and strategies for St. Lucia's development. The project was conceptualised in 2011 after a country assessment was conducted by the Caribbean Development Bank. The project aims to address some of the deficiencies that were highlighted in that assessment, among them gender imbalances, poor education achievement for men, inadequate employment and training and high incidence of single parents. The Caribbean Development Bank gave a US$115,000 grant to the government of St. Lucia to start the project in 2014 but was halted and resumed in 2017. The team of experts were in St. Lucia for the inception mission from May 6th to 10th 2019, where they engaged in training exercises for officers of the Department of Gender Relations and public servants in various ministries, departments and agencies on gender analysis and gender inclusion in development planning. The government of St. Lucia handed over the newly constructed blocks at the Schwaeser Secondary School. The newly reconstructed blocks B and C, delivered under the Disaster Vulnerability Reduction Project, DAPRP, forms part of the government's mandate to provide climate-resilient schools throughout the country. The blocks are designed to be earthquake and hurricane resistant and will serve as emergency shelters during natural disasters. The newly constructed blocks house approximately 650 students and comprised, among other modern trappings, a sick bay, resource room, technical drawing lab, IT laboratory, music and theatre rooms, and chemistry and physics laboratories. This project was funded by the World Bank at EC 10,123,734. The presentation of the Third Global Conference on Health and Climate Change report is expected to provide the government with recommendations on how to maximise the health benefits of tackling climate change. The Pan-American Health Organization Director, Dr. Carisa Aitien, said it is important that small island developing states take action to protect lives from the impacts of climate change. Paho and World Health Organization representative for Barbados and the Eastern Caribbean, Dr. Godfrey Shreb, believes the Prime Minister of St. Lucia will be a great voice to advance the action plan for health and climate change in the small island developing states. Paho and other high-level officials also got the opportunity to saw the comfort bay residence for the elderly facility, which has been retrofitted under the Smart Healthcare Facilities Project. This has been your midday news brief. Thank you for watching.