13 November 2023
Many students in Yemen have had to drop out of school or have been unable to enroll due to damaged infrastructure and other administrative challenges resulting from the war. “Back to school” is the slogan of the project for the Distribution of Education Supplies Implemented by UNICEF Yemen. This project aims to alleviate the difficulties for children to continue their education. i-APS Yemen is providing third-party monitoring services (TPM) for the first phase of the project, covering 482 schools in 143 districts from 22 governorates in Yemen. Our team of data collectors and analysts have monitored the distribution of supplies as well as the entire distribution costs for the support to the targeted schools. As much as this engagement has been a wonderful opportunity for our team, conducting the assessment has had its challenges.
The complexity of the project and the need to access schools in hard-to-reach areas due to security conditions and difficult terrains have made us explore new practices and logistics solutions. i-APS Yemen teams have combined local knowledge with a flexible work manner to deliver monitoring services on time to UNICEF. We also owe this success to school officials and everyone else who participated in our field research for their willingness to cooperate and give us detailed insight into beneficiaries’ views toward the support received.