Cash and Covid-19 – Lessons for the future
Necessity is the mother of invention. During two years of the pandemic, Cash and Voucher Assistance (CVA), has proved to be a flexible and effective mode of assistance, lending itself to remote delivery and supporting recipients to meet varied needs. As organisations raced to adapt, CVA was scaled up or adjusted, new ways of working were developed and multiple new tools and guidance were swiftly produced. The crisis also highlighted the importance of linkages between social protection and humanitarian cash and drove efforts to find more effective ways of working together and enabling better coverage of those in need.
This story is documented in the 2021 paper published in the ODI Disaster’s journal ‘The use of cash assistance in the Covid-19 humanitarian response: accelerating trends and missed opportunities’. This paper crowdsourced information from across the CALP Network and paints a thorough and fascinating picture of the use of CVA during the first year of the pandemic.
In a series of 2 webinars, experts have shared their ‘lessons for the future’ in three key areas:
- Digitalisation & remote programming
- Linkages with social protection systems
See recordings below for insights about what should happen next, which key trends are here to stay, and which are likely to be short-lived.
