Much of Yemen’s civilian infrastructure have been decimated in the ongoing conflict. The conflict has severely hampered farm-productivity, storage, and distribution of food-stuff and essential goods. Thousands of people have lost their jobs and life-saving medicines and other consumer staples have become scarce. Of what remains, the prices are inflated to the point where civilians can no longer afford the cost of basic sustenance.

Yemen’s war has had a particularly devastating impact on women and children. Although 60-year-old Fatima Mohammed Hamid Al-Masallami has seven daughters and two sons, she lacks a stable livelihood support. She is the sole provider for her 14-year-old differently-abled grandson.

After his parents left him 10 years ago, Fatima raised her grandson as her own in the small shop that also serves as their home. His special needs and physical impairments leave him unable to carry out his essential tasks or to attend school. When a German medical team visited Taiz several years ago, Fatima’s grandson underwent three operations. In the end, the doctors told her that there was no hope of recovery, that he would never walk again.

Fatima often reflects on when her husband was still alive, the best times of her life as she recalls. 

After his death, she was forced to work because she had nobody else. With sadness, Fatima explains, “I love my grandson and favor him more than my own children who left me unsupported and did not take care me."

Fatima works hard to ensure that she can afford to hire a private tutor to help with her grandson’s education: “I worked cleaning houses, gardens and schools to provide my grandson with the essentials he needs.”

While these jobs have helped, they were temporary and always left Fatima searching for the next opportunity. Eventually, she found out about the cash-for-work programme implemented by the Social Fund for Development (SFD) in partnership with UNDP Yemen.

With funding and support from the World Bank, and in partnership the Social Fund for Development (SFD) and UNDP Yemen, the Yemen Emergency Crisis Response Project (YECRP) helps to reduce the negative effects of the war on local households and communities, assisting recovery from the bottom up. The project recognizes that if income-generation and livelihood opportunities are increased for the most vulnerable groups (including youth, internally-displaced persons and women like Fatima), households will become stronger, better able to cope, and capable of assisting and contributing to their communities.

In Fatima’s words: “The work I do, spraying tiles, is not hard and the money I get helps me meet my grandson’s daily care needs.”

Like many Yemeni women, Fatima hopes the war ends and that she can reclaim the life she once knew. Through the cash-for-work project, she has been able to weather her hardships and to hope for a brighter future.

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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.