The Launch of the State of World’s Cash Report 2023

If you missed the launch of CALP’s seminal report, The State of the World’s Cash 2023, here’s a summary of the event.

Karen Peachey, CALP’s Director, summarised the key findings, debates and highlights from this comprehensive report which represents a neutral and impartial assessment of the current context of Cash and Voucher Assistance (CVA) as part of humanitarian aid.

This was followed by a panel discussion chaired by Daphne Jayasinghe and comprised of Emmanuel Atam, Prof. Tan Sri Dr. Jemilah Mahmood and Rory Stewart.

The panel discussed trends and changes in the use of CVA, analysing both the opportunities and challenges that lie ahead. 

Key quotes

“Cash assistance gives people dignity, freedom, and independence to prioritise their own needs, and decide how to allocate resources to meet their needs. It is as simple as that. We are also finding that communities are also more aware of what cash does to the local economy. CVA not only allows people in crisis to make decisions to benefit them in the short term, but has the potential to have long-term impacts on devastated communities.”
Emmanuel Elam Atam
Co-founder, Fact Foundation (FACT)

“If you want to advance CVA, then the agencies have to stop squabbling. The veneer of mature debate on CVA belies the ugly fights over market share. And I have the scars and bruises of being part of that tussle, so I know it’s real. Instead of looking at how you grow the pie, people are focusing on how you divide the pie, and I think that’s the wrong way of looking at cash programming.”
Prof. Tan Sri Dr. Jemilah Mahmood
Executive Director, Sunway University.

“The employment of CVA ensures that your money goes 20 times further, being able to offer 20 times the impact. Put it to the test. …. let us take the humanitarian aid budget and deliver it in CVA, with 93% reaching the recipients, and only 7% being spent on the full management, and then see what the impact is. My guess is that we would demonstrate repeatedly that cash is just completely revolutionary.”
Rory Stewart,
Senior Advisor, GiveDirectly

Watch the full recording:

Watch some highlights:

About the speakers