Cash and voucher assistance
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FAO’s cash and voucher programmes provide people with life-saving means to immediately cope with crises, while protecting their livelihoods and strengthening their resilience to future shocks. In humanitarian contexts, cash and vouchers
provide dignity, choice and flexibility – recipients decide for themselves how, when and where to spend the cash to access the goods and services they most need in local markets.
Cash transfers have the potential to bridge humanitarian and development assistance. Predictable, multi-year, monthly humanitarian cash assistance can be used to strengthen or complement nascent or existing social assistance programmes and systems.
Supporting people beyond seasonal needs by addressing vulnerabilities provides a sustainable long-term approach that breaks the circle of dependency.
Vouchers allow FAO to provide farmers and pastoralists with access to the locally available essential inputs, equipment and services they need to maintain and improve their livelihoods.
FAO’s cash and voucher assistance includes
- cash+
- unconditional cash transfers
- conditional cash transfers
- cash for work
- agricultural input vouchers
- nutrition vouchers
- seed and input trade fairs
Cash+ is widely used as it allows beneficiaries to address immediate basic needs while additional livelihoods assistance helps bolster livelihoods and resilience. Cash for work also provides opportunities for communities to rehabilitate and/or build essential infrastructure (water management, soil conservation, market access, etc.) to improve the sustainability of their livelihoods when threatened by climate change and/or conflict.
A growing number of cash and voucher programmes are delivered using electronic means, such as electronic vouchers and mobile money, including through IDEA (Identification, Delivery, Empowerment Applications), a system developed by FAO for the management of beneficiary data and the delivery and tracking of assistance.
Latest news
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News
FAO provides cash plus livestock and agriculture packages to cushion vulnerable households from the desert locust invasion
05/08/2021
The desert locust invasion in Somalia has significantly affected the country’s food security, with successive generations of swarms...
![FAO’s growing Cash+ programme helps farmers, pastoralists and fisherfolk build their own resources for resilience to future shocks to food security. © FAO / Isak Amin / Arete](/images/devemergencylibraries/news-import/po_som_20201010_0025_thumb.tmb-th600x400.jpg?Culture=en&sfvrsn=220668e4_1)
News
Tools and training with ‘mobile money’ help restore livelihoods in Somalia
13/05/2021
FAO’s growing Cash+ programme helps farmers, pastoralists and fisherfolk build their own resources for resilience to future shocks to food security.
![Myanmar | European Union instrumental in providing support to vulnerable women](/images/devemergencylibraries/news-import/myanmar_covid19_thumb.tmb-th600x400.jpg?Culture=en&sfvrsn=43297d17_1)
News
Myanmar: European Union instrumental in providing support to vulnerable women
06/11/2020
In August 2020, a new surge in locally transmitted cases of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) was reported in Rakhine State and other...
Publications
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Publications
Improving food security and nutrition through cash+ in Armenia
05/2024
Combining cash transfers, productive assets and inputs distribution with agricultural and nutrition trainings for vulnerable rural households in Lori...
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Publications
Identification, Delivery and Empowerment Application (IDEA): An FAO ecosystem of applications to power livelihoods and agricultural assistance in food crisis contexts
04/2024
The Identification, Delivery and Empowerment Application (IDEA) is a digital ecosystem of applications developed by the Food and Agriculture Organization...
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Publications
Cash and voucher assistance: Providing live-saving assistance to enable vulnerable families to cope with crises or shocks and promoting resilient agricultural livelihoods for the future
06/2023
Through its cash and voucher assistance programmes, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) provides immediate relief to vulnerable...
Multimedia
Video
Identification, Delivery and Empowerment Application (IDEA) in Mozambique
20/12/2023
To ensure the protection and secure management of beneficiary data, and delivery and tracking of assistance, FAO developed the Identification, Delivery...
Video
Distribution of concentrated animal feed and unconditional cash
30/08/2023
The generous funding of European Union Humanitarian Aid enabled FAO to safeguard the food and nutrition security of 12 000 vulnerable households (84...
Video
Agrodealers in Mozambique use the FAO Identification, Delivery and Empowerment Application (IDEA)
26/01/2024
To ensure the protection and secure management of beneficiary data, and delivery and tracking of assistance, FAO developed Identification, Delivery...