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Cash 101: Cash and Voucher Assistance Explained

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Embracing new technology is critical to making humanitarian response – including cash and voucher assistance (CVA) – as effective as possible. But when we integrate new technologies and partnerships into humanitarian assistance, we must ensure that the safety, dignity and preferences of people in crisis always come first.

Digital technology is transforming the way we respond to emergencies. Innovations range from how we identifying people eligible for assistance, to data collection for assessments and monitoring, to communication with crisis-affected communities. Digital payment systems, including mobile devices, electronic vouchers, and cards – when used appropriately – can deliver timelier, more secure, more cost effective, and inclusive assistance. But as the volume of data we collect, store and share about people grows, we must ensure that our data protection systems keep pace and that we understand and mitigate for the risks inherent in new technologies.

Latest

Mobile money enabled cash assistance: User journeys in Burundi

Report

GSMA’s Mobile for Humanitarian Innovation programme teamed up with Ground Truth Solutions to apply a human-centred design approach to understand the user journeys of Concern Worldwide’s cash recipients in Burundi. It provides insights into how humanitarian organisations and mobile money providers can...

14 December 2020

Stepping up CVA with COVID-19: Paving the way we respond to future crisis

Report

COVID-19 has thrown the world into lockdown and taken a tremendous toll on the health, social, and economic status of vulnerable communities, households, and individuals. Limitations on daily activities and an over-arching health crisis, restrictions on movement, closures of schools and businesses have...

15 September 2020

The Provision of Cash and Voucher Assistance in the Response to the Venezuela Refugee and Migrant Crisis: Findings and lessons learned – Main report

Report

This study, for which data was compiled between March and April 2020, seeks to document lessons and good practices in the delivery of CVA in Ecuador and Colombia by humanitarian organisations and governments, in response to migrants and refugees from Venezuela. The purpose of this analysis is...

4 September 2020

Summary: Lessons and Recommendations on the Use of CVA for the Caribbean Atlantic Hurricane Season

Report

This is a summary document of the CALP Network’s Winds of Change: Lessons and Recommendations on the Use of CVA in the Caribbean and includes a matrix of learning and evidence from the region used to inform the report. This document is made possible by the generous support of the American people...

13 August 2020

Responding to the COVID-19 Crisis: Linking humanitarian Cash and Social Protection in practise

Report

This paper seeks to demonstrate practical ways in which NGOs are linking their humanitarian work to social protection and the added importance of this in the context of COVID-19, following from the earlier work of CCD outlining the role of NGOs to
improve the access to and delivery of social protection in...

27 July 2020

Presentation for the CALP Network’s webinar on remote registration and verification in the COVID-19 response

Presentation

Watch the webinar recording here Speaker presentations from the CALP Network’s 14 July 2020 webinar on: Peril or pitfalls?: Emerging practices on remote registration and verification in the COVID-19 response Remote CVA programming has been highlighted as a key challenge for the community of practice in...

16 July 2020

COVID-19: Invest now in cash/voucher-social protection scale-up or children pay the price later

Report

Read the article here. Only socially accountable Social Protection Assistance beyond humanitarian cash/voucher programmes – if properly and quickly implemented – will protect generations of children from the aftershocks of COVID-19. Despite cash and voucher transfers becoming the tool of choice of...

25 June 2020

Collaborative Cash Delivery Network – Grand Bargain – Collaboration Agreement Accomplishments 2020

Report

The Collaborative Cash Delivery (CCD) Network is pleased to present its achievements against the commitments made by our global members’ CEOs at the 2019 Grand Bargain Summit as part of our global collaboration agreement. We know we are better together, and in this time of increasing pressure on the...

24 June 2020

Unity Card

Presentation

In response to NCOVID, we have launched UNITY CARD,
which gives immediate technical support to the deployment of cash aid via this special card payments

18 May 2020

We Turn Mobile Sim Cards Into Bank Accounts for the Emerging World

Presentation

Fonbnk LLC (“Fonbnk” or the “Company”) is new distributed finance company, providing borderless banking infrastructure directly to unbanked people around the world using the mobile internet. Anyone with a prepaid mobile SIM card and a verified online identity can now have a global stored value...

5 May 2020

Webinar | Multi-purpose Cash Transfer and Child Protection: a case study (English and Spanish editions)

Webinar recording

Watch the webinar recording here. More information here. In 2018, with the support of OFDA and FFP, Save the Children implemented a multi-purpose cash transfer ‘Plus’ program in response to the influx of Venezuelan into Colombia. The program aimed at covering vulnerable household’s basic needs and...

4 May 2020

CCD Ethiopia one-year in: Collaboration in reality

Report

Based on insights compiled from surveys and interviews conducted with members of the Ethiopian cash community and CCD (Collaborative Cash Delivery Network) members in January 2020, this report provides an overview of how CCD Ethiopia is working towards global and national objectives, takeaways for startup...

24 April 2020

Mercy Corps Tipsheet: CVA payments and digital data management

Guidelines and Tools

Building off the COVID-19 and CVA tipsheet , this guidance helps you think through considerations to be making alongside your current payment providers. This also includes tips on if/when/how to anticipate
transitions to newly viable forms of transfer mechanisms/technologies in a given context.

26 March 2020

Cash Week 2019: How cash is driving change across the system

Blog Post

Cash Week 2019 aimed to provide a space to reflect, learn, and look ahead, to ensure quality in our use of CVA at scale. The CALP team reflects on the key takeaways from the events that took place around the world, and what they mean for actors within and beyond the humanitarian sector.

20 February 2020

CVA and Risks: What happens in the field, stays in the field?

Blog Post

In October 2019 in Douala, Cameroon, the CALP Network facilitated a learning event exploring the risks to beneficiary protection in Cash and Voucher Assistance (CVA). This closed-door workshop, held as part of series of meetings and webinars on theme of CVA and risk in different regions, convened 25...

25 November 2019

Consent and Ownership in the Shift to Digital Cash and Voucher Assistance

Blog Post

Part of committing to cash and voucher assistance (CVA) is committing to going digital and collecting data. While they are two different things, they are deeply intertwined. And while an organisation can ‘go digital’ without cash programmes, it’s nearly impossible to commit to cash programmes in the...

11 November 2019

Mitigating Risks of Abuse of Power in Cash Assistance – 4 pages

Report

UNHCR and WFP are implementing a joint project to identify and mitigate risks of abuse by private sector service providers in their delivery of cash assistance to vulnerable populations. The project involves work with financial service providers, traders and other private sector stakeholders, as well as...

November 2019

Lessons in Driving Large Scale Change: the CALP Network’s reflections from the Humanitarian Innovation Exchange

Blog Post

The scaling of cash programming, enabled by mobile money, represents one of the most significant recent innovations in the humanitarian sector. In two guest blogs for Elrha (Enhanced Learning and Research for Humanitarian Assistance), our Director Karen Peachey explores the CALP Network’s role in...

16 August 2019

Cash 101: Cash and Voucher Assistance Explained

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