Humanitarian Cash Transfer: A reference guide for practitioners in the Philippines

This reference guide strives to provide parameters for context-adapted cash transfers. It includes a set of minimum operating standards, discussed with the CWG membership. In particular, the following themes were the subject of detailed discussions and considered as key issues for CVA practitioners in a survey done in March:

• Standardization of the targeting process;
• Harmonization of transfer values for multi-purpose cash assistance based on the minimum expenditure basket (MEB);
• Minimum vulnerability standards for selection of cash beneficiaries;
• Basic mapping of financial service providers (FSP), based on the latest experience during STY Rai.

This document is designed to provide recommendations to CVA practitioners based on discussions in the CWG and its relevant task forces. The document, however, does not reflect a consensus from all members of the working group, rather, an opinion of the CashCap expert and OCHA largely based on the inputs of CWG members, CVA practitioners and experts working in the cash sector in the Philippines during the Odette response.

This document is for humanitarian agencies and other stakeholders that intend to consider cash assistance as a modality of response in small, medium or large scale natural or man-made emergencies in the Philippines. It should serve as a reference for the design, delivery and monitoring of cash assistance programs in a manner consistent with other practitioners in the Philippines and international standards.