Devery — Ministry of Education & World Food Programme Tunisia Project Summary
Tags: Humanitarian, Blockchain, Devery

We promised earlier this year that we will provide a detailed update on our Tunisia project. Today, we’d like to write a summary of the project, including what we did, the experiences we learned and the future of what we have developed.

The Tunisia project started in Feb 2018, when an invitation was extended via one of our advisors for us to visit Tunisia to scope a possible implementation of our solution to a pressing issue there.

Tunisia is a small nation in the north of the African continent. It’s usually overshadowed by its bigger neighbours but is a relatively peaceful, progressive, developing muslim nation. It’s famous for its historical sites including numerous Roman ruins. In fact, Roman empire ruins are so numerous in Tunis that some sites remain abandoned due to the lack of funds to maintain all the sites.

The country is also blessed with nice beaches, and many in the older generation would recognise one of the regions from the similar name it shares with a popular location in the original Star Wars franchise. The country is also a former French colony, and thus most people are bilingual — speaking both French and Arabic.

In the development community, there is an understanding that nutrition plays an important part in a good educational system. In Tunisia, children especially from more rural regions, may not be able to gain sufficient nourishment due to economic reasons. This can lead not only to undernourishment but also affect these kids’ ability to participate and learn during school.

Initial discussions with Ministry of Education Officials guided and translated via WFP staff.

The Ministry of Education & World Food Programme, in recognising this issue has a school meal programme in place to ensure kids who are not sufficiently well off receive at least one proper meal a day at their school. This allows them to receive the nourishment they need to learn and participate in school.

There are however issues with this, the main issue is that allocations of meals are not always sufficient which are mainly due to economic reasons. Price fluctuations of staple foods can lead to schools not being able to buy sufficient meals or not being able to get the right kinds of foods.

The Ministry of Education together with the WFP, are thus working on implementing food banks, a system where food storage warehouses are used to store food to distribute in the event of emergencies or food shortages.

The first constructed Ministry of Education foodbank in Tunisia.

When we first visited in February 2018, the food bank project was just being rolled out and they needed help with getting a software solution to address the weak points of the system. This must also to be able to track food deliveries and shipment to and from the suppliers, food bank and ultimately the school.

Inside the first foodbank

On our first visit, we spoke to the various stakeholders in the Ministry of Education including the minister and WFP to determine the requirements of the project. We signed an MOU on the basis of our understanding of the requirements and proceeded to start with the development of the software.

From there, we headed back to build the software on the basis of the needs as expressed by the stakeholders. We started by determining the core issues to be addressed but also some of the challenges that must be borne in mind.

Importantly, the aim was to address some fundamental shift in how the tracking of food was to be done. At that time food was tracked via paper, and the all issues that arose mean that the schools had to call up the ministry for assistance.

There were many human touch points and possible points where efficiencies could be gained but also to reduce the burden on the people that are in the system.

Technological considerations also came into play, as technology penetration in Tunisia is not as advanced in more rural areas and the spread of smart phones not as numerous as some developed countries.

We also had to bear in mind that for many, this system would be the first time they would use a technological approach to track all of these, and a system too complex would not only deter the users but may lead to possible circumvention of the very system that was designed to help.

The WFP office in Tunisia.

With these things in mind, we proceeded to get the designs of the platform completed and then to get the platform coded. This was a long process in which there were various stages.

There were various stages of implementation, testing and fine tuning. Things that felt minor had to be considered — for example, if schools were to request food, do we allow them to request specific food items or just generic food categories?

The system was built to be able to determine which foodbank had the required food items but then, how do we determine who has the right to choose which food items to send? Which part of software needs to pick the foodbank? These were all questions that came into play into scoping, designing and building the functional application.

In many cases, we had to build workarounds that dealt with edge cases. In others aspects, we had to consult and make decisions along the way on whether certain features would be included or otherwise.

The first iteration of the software was ready in September last year, with the team demonstrating the software during the 20th Global Child Nutrition Forum held in October. During this time we also ran an impromptu workshop with the help of WFP during the conference to explain further the software & technology. We gathered feedback from the ministry and WFP and over the past few months have been working on the changes and improvements to the platform.

Chironjit & Andrew with the WFP Tunisia team in their office.

We also made a video in French to explain the key functionalities of the platform and to demonstrate its capabilities. The application is a functional chain of custody application that allows the tracking of deliveries of food with ease and transparency.

In February this year, we headed over to Tunisia for the third time to finally deliver the software. We had the chance to train the first batch of people in using the platform for the intended purpose.

We used that time to also work together with the WFP on developing manuals in French that can be used for training as well as guidance to the future batch of users. This would make the process easier for the Ministry’s internal teams to utilise the software with ease.

These manuals were written in English by us, and then, with the help of WFP, were translated into French. We expect that some parts will be translated into Arabic where required.

A screenshot of the platform

We also did a formal handover of the platform and the application is in the Ministry’s hands. We hope to see the complete application utilised within this food bank program and ensure safe delivery of meals.

We have now completed our part of the project, having delivered our original scoped project and have given the software & manuals to WFP to work with the ministry. We expect that the ministry intends to use this software for its current purpose but also to expand its use. We’ve provided below a video demo of our application walkthrough in French:

We wish the ministry and WFP all the best in its goals to ensure that food reaches all 4000 plus schools in the country. We would like also like to thank WFP team for assisting with translation, setting up meetings and coordinating this entire process alongside our team throughout the project in Tunisia. We continue to provide some support but expect to complete these once all minor bugs have been ironed out.