Yemen’s civil war has severely impacted the country’s educational system. From 2015-2016, the number of out-of-school rose to 1.8 million out of more than 5 million registered students. A staggering 3,600 schools have been directly affected by the conflict; 68 schools are now occupied by armed groups; 248 schools have sustained severe structural damage; and 270 are now used to house refugees.

Some of the more pervasive problems the education system confronts are limited funds to operate schools and pay teacher salaries, insufficient materials to reconstruct damaged schools, and a lack of equipment to print textbooks and create school supplies.

Zamzam Saleh Al Azab, a 26-year-old math teacher from Dhula’a, used to work in the Al-Hassan Al Hamdani School. Despite her love of teaching and working with students, she had to seek out other forms of employment because she stopped receiving a salary during the war. Yemen’s government has not been able to improve this situation for Zamzam and others like her due to limited authority and availableresources.

Thanks to the Social Fund for Development’s cash-for-work programme funded and supported by the World Bank-UNDP partnership through the Yemen Emergency Crisis Project (YECRP), Zamzam was able to weather the financial crisis in her life by becoming part of a project where she is helping to rebuild and restore the Ali Bin Talib School by cleaning and painting the walls and repurposing used tires to serve as tree planters.

Acknowledging the desire by the Yemeni people to live peaceful and dignified lives without having to depend on foreign assistance, YECRP’s cash-for-work projects are designed to broadly address the most pressing needs of Yemenis. These include restoring their livelihoods, strengthening their resilience to current and future challenges, and laying the foundation for long-term development.

Working alongside her cash-for-work colleagues, Zamzam is part of a passion

Zamzam’s mother used to sell clothes to her neighbors, and now works with her daughter in the programme. She spends the money she earns to meet the family’s needs while Zamzam saves the money she earns with the goal of setting up a hairdressing salon until she can return to work as a teacher. She has already purchased some of the salon’s equipment and looks forward to working with clients from the comfort of her home, as soon as she saves another 100,000 riyals. 

While she appreciates her income and the opportunity to work, Zamzam saysthe work is hard and the money is not enough. “But at least I can see life on the walls of the school instead of fearing falling walls falling due to the conflict.”

Zamzam adds, “I will work on the school refurbishment until I find a suitable job. The best moment of my life was when I was given the chance to work in the cash-for-work programme.” Like many other Yemenis, Zamzam does not want this project to stop until the war ends and peace is restored throughout Yemen. 

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Funded and supported by the World Bank, the Yemen Emergency Crisis Response Project (YECRP) is implemented by the Social Fund for Development (SFD) and the Public Works Project (PWP) in partnership with UNDP. The USD $400 million project provides economic stimuli in the form of large cash-for-work projects, support to small businesses, and labor-intensive repairs of socio-economic assets, benefiting vulnerable local households and communities across Yemen.