Understanding the impact of COVID-19 on Cash and Voucher Assistance

In addition to the health crisis, COVID-19 has sparked an economic crisis that will disproportionately affect the most vulnerable members of society, particularly in humanitarian contexts. The Cash Barometer project explores the economic impact, in order to understand the effects of the crisis as well as how recipients’ perspectives inform cash and voucher assistance (CVA) responses, on two levels: 

Global

We are working with key global actors such as CaLP and CashCap to understand the wider impacts of COVID-19 on cash and voucher assistance, and their approaches to the current crisis. We are bringing the findings of our work at the technical and in-country level to the discussions to ensure the perceptions of people affected by the crisis and technical actors are central to the ongoing response.

We are also conducing online surveys with Financial Service Providers to better understand their perspectives on the challenges and opportunities brought by the current crisis, as key actors in the effort towards digital CVA at scale.

In-country

In CAR we are conducting qualitative User Voice interviews to bring the voices of people affected by crisis into the local, regional, and national response.

In Nigeria we are working with the Cash Working Group to ensure that the perceptions of people in hard to reach places or without connection to communications networks are considered in CVA design and inform the COVID-19 response.

In Somalia we are launching a citizens’ survey, which includes CVA recipients, to better understand perceptions of the COVID-19 response and the economic impacts of the pandemic.

Partners