Remote Assessment Support during COVID-19: Welthungerhilfe in Turkey

With the WHO declaring a global pandemic in March 2020 and a looming sense of uncertainty sweeping across many nations, the number of emergency nutrition assessments being conducted dried up overnight. The fear of COVID-19 spreading during household surveys meant many humanitarian organizations paused their surveys until they could better understand the risks and the mitigation measure necessary in a COVID-19 world. 

For the GNC Technical Alliance’s (the Alliance) Technical Support Team (TST), this meant adapting the ways we provide technical support to nutrition assessments.  The support our Assessment Advisor, Alexa Humphreys, provided to Welthungerhilfe (WHH) when conducting a Food Security Livelihoods (FSL) and Infant Young Child Feeding (IYCF) assessment in Turkey in early 2021, is a great example. 

Turkey hosts more than 65% of the world’s Syrian refugees and many live in Hatay or Gaziantep provinces. The assessment by WHH aimed to collect FSL and IYCF data from both Syrian and Turkish households and draw meaningful comparisons to inform their programming. WHH approached the Alliance for technical guidance and support throughout the survey process, from planning through to data analysis and report writing, to strengthen the quality of the results.

Alexa gave some insight into her experience of providing support to WHH:

“If this same support had been requested before COVID, I would have packed my bags and been on the next flight to Turkey. But in this context, where no anthropometry data was going to be collected, the training for enumerators was online, and COVID-19 closed borders, instead I delivered support remotely. I focused on providing support at key technical and conceptual points such as leading calls with in-country partners to talk through the sample size calculation and deciding on what sampling approaches were to be used.

Although I couldn’t personally join the data collection, I was able to support the survey coordinators to resolve any issues coming up during the data collection process. Each night once all data had been electronically submitted in Turkey, the coordinators would send it to me. I would review it and send any feedback back to them that same night. They would then share this feedback with the enumerators the next morning. In this way, there was a very consistent and interactive feedback loop on data quality during the entire data collection period.

Once data collection ended the needs of the assessment shifted to data analysis. At this stage, I focused on reviewing and re-running data analyses to ensure accuracy. I also suggested ways of strengthening data visualizations to tell a better story from the data that had been collected.”

Alexa’s experience supporting WHH in their assessment highlights how the Alliance was able to work collaboratively with field-level actors in providing timely remote support that contributed substantively to the quality of assessment results. This is a great example of how remote technical backstopping can support successful assessments in the field. 

Welthungerhilfe is one of the largest private aid organisations in Germany; politically independent and non-denominational. It is fighting for “Zero Hunger by 2030”. Since it was founded in 1962, more than 9,830 overseas projects in 70 countries have been supported with €3.95 billion. Welthungerhilfe works on the principle of help for self-help: from fast disaster relief to reconstruction and long-term development cooperation projects with national and international partner organisations.

For more information please visit http://www.welthungerhilfe.org.tr/

Photo credit: Grossmann / Welthungerhilfe