OUANAMINTHE, Haiti -- As thousands peacefully took to the streets in Haiti’s quake-scarred capital city Wednesday, Haitian officials and foreign diplomats focused on rebuilding the country’s shattered economy with new commitments of more than $240 million in foreign aid.

On the second anniversary Thursday of the earthquake that killed more than 300,000 people, frustrations are mounting but Haitian leaders and foreign donors are trying to lay the foundation for change and move the conversation away from aid to development and job opportunities for millions of Haitians who currently rely on informal jobs, remittances and nongovernmental organizations to survive.

“If you ask people in the camps what do you want? They don’t say housing first,’’ said Nigel Fisher, the United Nations head humanitarian official in Haiti. “They’ll say jobs first, jobs second, jobs third. Then they’ll say an education for our kids. It’s misguided to think the response to displacement is only housing. It’s jobs to give people the choices of what to do, where to live, how to use their money.”

In the northern border city of Ouanaminthe, former U.S. President Bill Clinton promoted job creation as the key to Haiti’s progress by visiting two projects, a factory operated by the shoe-making company Timberland, and a farm whose production includes nuts used in peanut butter to treat malnourished children.

Both projects are in a region hundreds of miles north of the quake-affected capital. But the tragedy came to them when more than 8,000 quake victims showed up in the aftermath of the disaster. Many have since returned to the capital, unable to find work, the town’s mayor said.

“This year we want to commemorate not just what happened, but we want to be looking forward,” said Clinton, standing on the Timberland factory floor in an industrial park that employs almost 7,000 Haitians. “To me, this is an example of the kinds of things other companies can do. There are a lot of American companies that donated money, for example, to help Haiti in the aftermath of the quake that could invest where they haven’t considered it yet.”

By American standards, the number of workers employed by both the farm and factory are small. But they represent the kind of effort, Clinton said, that will help Haiti’s economy grow and its people to sustain themselves.

He noted that Timberland came to help Haitians reforest and later found that it could not only put money in farmers’ pockets, but also turn a profit employing Haitians in manufacturing. The company has operated a factory in the neighboring Dominican Republic since 1982, an official said.

“I don’t think you can put 100 percent of the unemployed people to work in apparel, for example,” Clinton said. “But I don’t think you can build a modern economy without manufacturing being an important part of it.”

On Wednesday, several thousand Haitians marched through downtown Port-au-Prince to parliament. Holding up signs, they demanded jobs and land reforms to allow for more temporary and permanent housing. The sign hoisted up by one man read: “I am 25 and I’ve never held a job.”

At one point the demonstrators pushed against the perimeter gate surrounding the temporary parliament area demanding to speak with lawmakers and a small group was eventually allowed to enter.