Quick Impact Projects (QIPs) are small-scale, low cost projects, funded by our missions, that are planned and implemented within a short timeframe.
QIPs respond to the needs expressed by local communities. As a result, they cover a wide range of programmatic activities from refurbishing a school to providing women with safe water access points. QIPs are mainly implemented through local actors including local authorities, non-governmental and grassroots organisations. As such, the implementation of QIPs projects help build their management capacities while broadening the mission’s outreach at the local level.
Quick impact projects helping to fight the pandemic
Following the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, missions rapidly reoriented available QIPs funds to address urgent needs of the communities. Missions focused on addressing people’s need that are directly related to the health emergency, which increased the stand of the missions in popular perceptions while also strengthening local institutional capacities.
Missions have distributed medical, food, and cleaning supplies and hygiene kits to the population, as well as training on handwashing, and making of soaps and masks. For example, in the Central African Republic, local women groups are implementing a project to make soap and produce masks for the population. Similarly, MONUSCO implemented a project on protective mask manufacturing that resulted in the production of over 2,000 masks per day.
Missions such as MINUSCA, MINUSMA, MONUSCO, UNMISS, UNAMID, UNFICYP, UNISFA, and UNIFIL organized or facilitated sensitization activities to raise local communities’ awareness on COVID-19. These activities have included training of community sensitizers which consisted of coaching sessions with the local government officials and community leaders, CSO’s (Civil Society Organization), women and youth groups, medical officers, religious and traditional leaders, IDPs (Internally Displaced Persons) and refugees, traders, etc. Local journalists have been trained on how to analyze rumors and crosscheck information. Women have been engaged to sensitize women on COVID-19 prevention, which brings them to the forefront of advocacy and creates an opportunity to generate income.
Examples of our work
Building confidence in the mission and its mandate.
The UN Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) used QIPs to create a weapons-free zone on the perimeter of the UN-House Protection of Civilians (PoC) site in Juba. The project included the construction of a solar-powered water system and the clearance of vegetation surrounding three communities around UN-House in Juba. Concrete activities like these help build public confidence in the ability of the mission to fulfil its mandate, in the case of UNMISS focused primarily on protection of civilians.
Building confidence in the peace process
The UN Mission in Mali (MINUSMA) is working with a local organization specialized in providing adult literacy education in Gao, northern Mali. MINUSMA helped refurbish 3 classrooms where more than a hundred men and women attend classes in their local languages.