Cash and Voucher Assistance (CVA) Programs Overview

Cash and Voucher Assistance (CVA) programs are humanitarian aid interventions that provide individuals and households with financial resources or vouchers to meet their basic needs in times of crisis or vulnerability. These programs give recipients the freedom and flexibility to prioritize their expenditures based on their personal needs, ensuring dignity and autonomy in how they manage their relief.

Types of Assistance:

1. Cash Assistance: Direct transfers of money to beneficiaries, either as physical cash, mobile money, or transfers to bank accounts or debit cards. This enables recipients to make purchases in local markets according to their priorities.

2. Voucher Assistance: Recipients are provided with vouchers that can be exchanged for specific goods or services at approved vendors. Vouchers can be restricted (only used for certain items like food or hygiene products) or unrestricted (used for any necessary item).

Key Benefits:

• Dignity and Choice: Recipients have the freedom to choose what they need the most, from food and healthcare to shelter and education.

• Efficiency: Cash transfers can be delivered quickly and cost-effectively, allowing beneficiaries immediate access to local markets.

• Economic Impact: By injecting money into local markets, CVA programs support local economies and businesses, fostering recovery and resilience.

• Scalability: Digital CVA solutions can scale rapidly during emergencies, reaching large populations through mobile transfers or digital platforms.

Recent Trends

In recent years, the demand for cash assistance versus more traditional assistance has increased. According to The CALP Network, 21% of international humanitarian assistance is given via CVA globally. If CVA was used as the method of distribution wherever feasible and appropriate, this would be 30-50%. Importantly, the share of humanitarian assistance given as CVA has been steadily increasing since 2015, and most recently saw a ~41% increase from 2021-2022.

Using a mobile data collection and case management system like CommCare makes running CVA programming faster, easier, and more efficient. Clients and program administrators alike can easily track the status of disbursements, monitor spending, and ensure accountability. 

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Given these recent trends, we wanted to help organizations who want to utilize CommCare for their CVA projects. We’ve partnered with Mercy Corps, Save the Children, and the International Rescue Committee (IRC) to offer a template CommCare application and all the associated documentation on how to use the app for your own organization. 

Follow the guide below to learn about CVA projects the CommCare template application, and how to gain access to it, and adapt it for use in your own organization!

What Makes A Cash Project?

There are many types of CVA projects: they span different sectors and geographies and respond to various crises and events. One CVA project could give mass distributions to all families in a certain region affected by a hurricane, while a second CVA project could give very targeted distributions to all refugee families experiencing homelessness. What makes them fall under the CVA umbrella is the fact that they have some sort of cash or voucher distribution component. 

Broadly speaking, in order to categorize projects based on how they will use CommCare for cash, we will split them into two types:

Pure Cash

In a “Pure Cash” project, the primary aim of the CommCare application and/or project is to distribute cash. The app is solely focused on workflows related to determining eligibility and amounts of distributions, tracking distributions and approvals, and doing post distribution monitoring. Other, non-cash distribution-related services are not tracked within the application. 

Cash+

In a Cash+ project, cash distribution is just a part of the larger project / application. For instance, an application may track clients who are referred for multi sectoral services. The application is used to deliver these services and track clients as they progress through the services-- for example, a client as they receive legal services and work through their case. A small subset of clients who receive one of those services might be eligible for cash. Within the workflows in the app, eligible clients will be identified, and then cash distributions initiated for those people.

In this configuration, the cash distribution workflow is only a small part of the larger application. While the entire CVA workflow is represented in the Cash+ model, it is often subsumed into other registration forms, and can look abbreviated compared to Pure Cash projects. 

The Template Application created here and shared below can work for either a Pure Cash or Cash+ project. We have instructions for how you can take and use this template application depending on your use case, because we know that each project will approach CVA in a different way.

Standard CVA Workflow

While every CVA project will look different, they all follow the same general workflow with the same steps:

• Self Registration (optional): Some projects may offer an option for potential clients to sign up on their own. You can use an SMS keyword + SMS Survey or our APIs to connect with something like MS Forms if you’d like your clients to be able to self register.   

• Screening/ Eligibility: The first step in any program is determining whether a person or household meets the eligibility criteria to receive a distribution. Depending on the program, the eligibility criteria may be incredibly complex, or very simple. At the end of this form, the client should know if they are part of the program or not.

• Enrollment: After a person or household has been deemed eligible, they will be officially enrolled in the program. It’s often at this stage that the amount of cash is determined, as well. Similar to eligibility, depending on the program there may be a flat amount that all clients receive, or a variable amount depending on client circumstances. 

• Payment: Once a person has been enrolled and their distribution amount confirmed, they receive their cash. This can happen either via direct distribution, e.g. the organization hands them over physical cash, or via transfer to mobile money, a bank account, or voucher. 

  • If an organization is doing direct distribution, they record the cash amount and confirm the distribution. 

  • If the payment is being transferred, oftentimes there is an additional step where payments need to be approved by a supervisor, and only after approval can they be made. After supervisors approve the payments, they are distributed directly to clients. This step is often done in bulk--where supervisors look at all of the existing requests for payments, and approve / reject them in one form. If payment is being triggered via a bank or other third party payment provider, at this point CommCare can connect via API to other systems to trigger that payment.

• Post-Distribution Monitoring: In order to track how payments are being used, a small sample of the clients are followed up with in post-distribution monitoring. This typically involves asking clients about the eligibility and enrollment process, as well as distribution process, and most importantly, about how they have used the cash since they received it.

• Feedback / Community Awareness: Throughout the project members of the community and clients can provide feedback about the project and staff. CARM systems ensure that organizations are accountable to the communities they serve. This means acting on the feedback received, making necessary changes, and ensuring transparency about how decisions are made and why certain actions are taken.

How the CVA Mobile Application Helps:

• Seamless Distribution: The mobile app simplifies cash and voucher distribution by securely sending funds or vouchers directly to beneficiaries’ mobile phones.

• Tracking and Monitoring: 

• User-Friendly Interface: The app offers a simple, accessible interface that allows users to redeem vouchers or manage cash assistance easily, even in areas with low digital literacy.

CVA programs are an essential tool for providing timely, efficient, and empowering assistance during emergencies, and this mobile application further enhances their reach and impact by making the process more accessible and transparent.

CommCare for CVA in Action

Save the Children, a CommCare Enterprise partner, has built an advanced cash and voucher assistance application for use across their global offices. See the video below for a demo of their application, app set up, and dashboards.