On Thursday, 19/08/2021G corresponding to: 01/11/1443H – the first steering committee meeting for the COVID-19 Response, Recovery, and Resilience for Learning Continuity, GPE Financed Project in Yemen was held virtually with high-level participation of the Minister of Planning and International Cooperation, IsDB Governor, Dr. Wa’aed Bathib and Minister of Education, H.E. Tariq Al-Akbari, Dr. Mohammed Alhawri, Deputy Minister in Ministry of Planning and International Cooperation for the Economic Studies and Forecasting Sector, IsDB Alternate Governor. The meeting was attended by the Global Partnership for Education (GPE) represented by Mr. Muhammed Tariq Khan, in addition to representatives from the Arab League Educational, Scientific, and cultural Organization (ALECSO), the Social Fund for Development (SFD), and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESO),

IsDB delegation was led by Br. Hassan Abdelmagid Musa, Country Operations Manager, GCC & Yemen, Br. Faisal Al-Jehani, Project Management Specialist. In addition to attendance of Sis. Munira Abdalwahid, Project Management Specialist and Eng. Ezzi Mansoob, IsDB Field Representative in Yemen.

The Continuing Education Project is approved for US$ 11 mn Grant provided by the Global Partnership for Education (GPE), where IsDB is the Grant Agent (GA). The Implementation partners are the Social Fund for Development (SFD), the Arab League Educational, Scientific, and cultural Organization (ALESCO), and the Agence Tunisienne de Coopération Technique​ (ATCT). This project is under the Response phase of the Special Preparedness and Response Program ( SPRP) of IsDB. The project aims to ensure learning continuity during and after the pandemic, the project is particularly targeting the following prime outcomes:

1. Approximately 0.5 million students (approx. 20% of school-going children from grade 1 to 6) supported with different interventions for learning continuity for literacy and numeracy (at least 50% girls).
2. Reopening of schools with different preventive measures targeting 7,000 schools across the country, which will cover approximately 1.75 to 2.10 million school-going children attending those schools.
3. Increasing resilience from the impact of the external crisis on the learning continuity through providing guidelines, protocols, training materials, and workshops for approximately 23,000 teachers and 430 Ministry of Education staff from the local, governorate, and national level (at least 50% female).

The first steering committee meeting was a breakthrough and a milestone for the start of implementation. During the meeting, the participants discussed the issues that hindered the launch of the Project and the solutions to overcome these issues. It was agreed among all the participants to accelerate the process and commence the disbursement of the project on the agreed timeframe. At the conclusion of the meeting, the technical team agreed to hold technical meetings periodically to follow-up on the progress of the implementation.