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Cash 101: Cash and Voucher Assistance Explained

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Tracking Cash and Voucher Assistance

We have committed to strengthening the scale and quality of cash and voucher assistance (CVA), but to measure our progress against this commitment, we must agree to a shared approach to collecting and analyzing data.

Grand Bargain signatories committed to increase the use of CVA, and to use common markers to measure these increases. Although the volume of CVA is beginning to be more effectively tracked, technical and policy challenges remain. These include:

  • Defining what data to collect, and how
  • Ensuring commitment to and use of data categories and systems
  • Addressing shortcomings of existing reporting systems which have often not been designed to include or disaggregate cash, vouchers, and other modalities
  • Reaching common agreement on standard categories for reporting to avoid incomplete and inconsistent data.

Current priorities

From 2017 to 2019, the CALP Network co-led the Grand Bargain Cash sub-workstream on Tracking CVA with DG ECHO, with the main objective of agreeing minimum requirements for tracking CVA. This includes the integration of CVA into key interagency reporting systems and platforms, namely OCHA’s Financial Tracking Service (FTS) and HPC Project Module, the International Aid Transparency Initiative’s (IATI) Data Standard, and 3W (Who does What, Where) reporting. The sub-workstream on Tracking CVA has now been merged into the Efficiency, Effectiveness and Value for Money sub-workstream, which the CALP Network will continue to co-lead.

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2012

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