Arabic

The Impact of Integrating Cash Assistance into Gender-Based Violence Response in Northwest Syria

Traditionally, refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs) have received aid in the form of in-kind assistance. Increasingly, however, cash and voucher assistance (CVA) is being used in humanitarian response to meet the diverse needs of those displaced by crisis and conflict. Preliminary findings by the Women’s Refugee Commission (WRC) indicate that CVA supports gender-based violence (GBV) prevention and response activities, yet humanitarian GBV programming does not comprehensively or consistently consider using CVA. This is a critical gap, as a refugee, internally displaced, and migrant women and girls face multiple risks and incidents of GBV before, during, and after crises. Read More...

Somalia: Cash Transfers via Mobile Money for Maternal Child Health Services

This study is part of a larger multi-country study by CARE entitled “Cash and Voucher Assistance for Sexual Reproductive Health and Rights Outcomes: Learnings from Colombia, Ecuador, Lebanon and Somalia.”
CARE Somalia has used Cash and Voucher Assistance (CVA) in its programs for over ten years. This includes CVA for food security and livelihoods, nutrition, WASH, and education, as well as multipurpose cash transfers. Since 2018, with support from Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance (OFDA) (now the Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance (BHA)), CARE Somalia has been implementing a food security and Livelihoods, health, nutrition, protection and WASH program. With BHA support, CARE currently supports 19 MCH facilities across Somaliland and Puntland that target children and pregnant and lactating women (PLW). Read More...

Ecuador: Vouchers for Sexual Reproductive Health and Rights

This study is part of a larger multi-country study by CARE entitled “Cash and Voucher Assistance for Sexual Reproductive Health and Rights Outcomes: Learnings from Colombia, Ecuador, Lebanon and Somalia.” Ecuador is both a transit and destination country for refugees and migrants from Venezuela and elsewhere. As of July 2020, over 400,000 Venezuelans were living in Ecuador. Venezuelan refugees and migrants have considerable health, psychosocial, and economic needs. Within these groups, women, adolescents, and LGBTQI people face heightened risks of Gender-Based Violence (GBV), human trafficking, and sexual exploitation as well as challenges to earning an income while in Ecuador. Although the public health system in Ecuador is free to all regardless of migration status, not all health – and especially SRH services – are covered in the public system. Furthermore, safe access to available services without discrimination based on nationality, sexual orientation/gender identity, or age is a barrier to access and uptake of SRH services in Ecuador. Read More...

Colombia: Vouchers for Sexual Reproductive Health (SRH) Services

This study is part of a larger multi-country study by CARE entitled “Cash and Voucher Assistance for Sexual Reproductive Health and Rights Outcomes: Learnings from Colombia, Ecuador, Lebanon and Somalia.” As a result of Venezuela’s socioeconomic and political crisis, there have been massive migratory flows of people from Venezuela into Colombia.1 According to the Interagency Coordination Platform for Refugees and Migrants, as of May 2020 over 1.76 million Venezuelans had fled to Colombia with many continuing to walk to and across the Southern Border with Ecuador as caminantes.

CARE Colombia began direct operations in the country in 2019, focusing primarily on the needs of Venezuelan
refugees and migrants in Pamplona, Norte de Santander and, later, Bucaramanga, Santander. Cash and Voucher
Assistance then (CVA) are primary modalities for CARE Colombia, particularly for its SRHR and protection portfolio.
Working with populations on the move as was was the case in this program, together with high levels of unmet SRHR needs resulted in a unique operating environment for a voucher intervention supporting SRHR programming.
This case study focuses on the design of the programming only. Due to the timing of the review, no substantive data on the user experience of the vouchers or outcomes could be captured. Read More...

Lebanon: Cash Transfers for Sexual Reproductive Health and Rights (SRHR) within Protection

This study is part of a larger multi-country study by CARE entitled “Cash and Voucher Assistance for Sexual Reproductive Health and Rights Outcomes: Learnings from Colombia, Ecuador, Lebanon and Somalia.”
On August 4, 2020, an explosion in the port of Beirut left hundreds killed and thousands injured, damaged numerous neighborhoods – including hospitals and residential buildings – and left 300,000 people homeless. The economic, social, and psychological tolls of the blast were added to an already strained population suffering from an economic crisis and the impacts of COVID-19. The Lebanese Red Cross reported in a post-blast study2 that, of those surveyed, approximately 5% of respondents reported having family members who were pregnant or lactating and, of those households, 40% reported needing Maternal Child Health (MCH) services. A UNFPA report identified a decrease in SRH service availability due to facilities destroyed or damaged in the blast.
Prior to the blast, the Interagency Sexual and Gender-based Violence (SGBV) Task Force conducted an assessment with 562 women and girls across the country on the SGBV impact since the beginning of COVID-19. This assessment found that 51% of respondents felt less safe in their communities and only 30% reported accessing health services.4 Sixty-seven percent of respondents reported that the main barrier to accessing services was lack of money.5 Read More...

CASH AND VOUCHER ASSISTANCE FOR SEXUAL REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH AND RIGHTS LEARNINGS FROM ECUADOR, COLOMBIA, LEBANON, AND SOMALIA

CARE is committed to ensuring that projects with cash and voucher assistance (CVA) are designed with and for women and girls, addressing recipients’ needs, challenges, and opportunities. CARE has invested in research on how to make CVA work for women and girls through gender-sensitive approaches to framing processes and outcomes of the modalities. As a widely accepted method of increasing access to services and improving autonomy, dignity, and resilience, programming with CVA has been integrated into numerous sectors to improve the lives of displaced communities, particularly the most underserved. To date, CARE’s CVA has primarily been used for food security and livelihood outcomes and multisectoral outcomes via multipurpose cash (MPC) transfers. Now, aligned with its strategic intent, CARE is investing in sectoral areas where CVA is less often used and that are of primary interest for women and girls, including gender-based violence (GBV) response and sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR).

Building on extensive experience with CVA and SRHR programming, CARE conducted a study to investigate how outcomes for the pilot initiatives using CVA for SRHR compare to global learnings, and to identify opportunities for strengthening and expanding pilots for long-term programming. The study reviewed programming in four contexts (Colombia, Ecuador, Lebanon, and Somalia). The initial study was undertaken by two consultants, one focused on Lebanon and Somalia and one focused on Colombia and Ecuador. Data collection included 25 remote key informant interviews (KIIs) with CARE staff at the global and country levels as well as staff from partner organizations, followed by After Action Reviews with each country team and a validation meeting. All activities were undertaken in either English or Spanish and transcripts were analyzed using data analysis software. Analysis was conducted both by country and across contexts to identify commonalities and thematic learning, mostly led by CARE technical advisors. Read More...

When Time Won’t Wait (Spanish, French, and Arabic)

Humanitarian crises can offer a ‘window of opportunity’ to transform unequal gender relations and shift harmful gender norms. Integration of gender into humanitarian programming ensures that the specific vulnerabilities, needs, capacities and priorities of women, girls, men and boys — related to pre-existing gender roles and inequalities, along with the impacts of the crisis — are recognised and addressed.
Sound gender analysis and programming from the outset is critical to effective crisis response in the short-term, and equitable and empowering societal change in the long-term. CARE’s Rapid Gender Analysis (RGA) approach and tool, developed during the humanitarian response in Syria in 2013, aims to drive a shift to locally driven and women-centered needs assessment which influences how needs are defined and responses are developed. The approach aims to provide essential information about gender roles and responsibilities, capacities, and vulnerabilities together with programming recommendations in situations where time is of the essence
and resources can be scarce. The ultimate goal of such an approach is to influence humanitarian response, program design and implementation to ensure that it supports not only the immediate needs of women and girls but also upholds their rights. CARE’s RGA has now been used in over 50 crises around the word and is featured as good practice in the Inter-Agency Standing Committee’s (IASC) Gender Handbook for Humanitarian Action. With rapidly increasing interest in and adoption of CARE’s RGA approach, discussion and questions continue as to whether increased awareness of gender, power and disaggregated data sets are translating into safer, more responsive, and effective aid.
To answer these questions, CARE commissioned an external evaluation to ‘provide an analysis of the effectiveness and influence of the RGA approach on adapting programming to improve gendered outcomes for crises-affected communities.’ The scope of the evaluation was global and focused on rapid gender analyses and related humanitarian programming over the period 2015-2020. These are executive summaries in Spanish, Arabic, and French. You can find the full report in English here: http://careevaluations.org/evaluation/when-time-wont-wait-cares-rapid-gender-analysis-approach-external-evaluation/ Read More...

Global Mapping Study on Gender Based Violence

Global Mapping Study on GBV. Led by CARE and ActionAid as co-leads of the task team the purpose of this study was to examine existing evidence around the issue of localization within the context of GBV prevention, response and coordination initiatives in humanitarian contexts. The study also sought to gather field perspectives on the state of GBV localization, and to examine the degree to which the global commitment to localization within the context of the humanitarian GBV sector has been operationalized.

Data was collected from a range of stakeholders participating in GBV coordination, including GBV Sub-Cluster Coordinators, representatives from local and/or women-led organizations, staff from national and international non-governmental organizations (NGOs) along with global leaders engaged in the localization debate. In line with the GBV AoR’s mandate, the primary focus of this study was on settings involving internally-displaced persons.

The final report is comprised of the following three documents:
- Summary Report (English, Arabic, French, Spanish, Bahasa, and Bengali)
- Full Report: The full report contains a detailed description of the study’s background, methodology, findings, and recommendations, and provides a comprehensive presentation of the data gathered through this research along with implications for future action. (Link here: http://www.careevaluations.org/evaluation/gbv-localization-mapping-study/)
- Appendix of Tools and Guidance: The appendix of tools and guidance serves as a companion document to both the summary and full versions of the report, and provides an overview of existing resource materials that have been developed pertaining to GBV localization. Read More...

Utilizing Cash and Voucher Assistance within Gender-based Violence Case Management to Support Crisis-Affected Populations in Ecuador: Learning Brief (Arabic)

With support from Sweden’s Ministry for Foreign Affairs, Women's Refugee Commission and CARE partnered to advance the Call to Action Roadmap by strengthening the capacity of GBV and CVA service providers in Ecuador to leverage CVA within case management services in the prevention of and response to GBV for crisis-affected populations.

This project, which spanned September to December 2019, serves as an opportunity to model comprehensive GBV case management in the face of high rates of GBV and to influence how humanitarian and development sectors and their practitioners respond to GBV in Ecuador. CVA has not yet been systematically leveraged to meet the needs of GBV survivors and those at risk (GBV clients). Previous work by CARE has focused on GBV prevention and mitigation in support of local government, women’s rights organizations, and civil society strengthening local policies and frameworks; these efforts will be complemented by this project’s focus on GBV response.

This learning brief was made possible by funding support from the Government of Sweden provided through the Ministry for Foreign Affairs. Read More...

Cash and Voucher Assistance that Works for Women: 6 Lessons from the Field

A brief summary from a multi-country study on "what does gender-sensitive cash and voucher assistance look like?".

The study adopted a user-centric approach to data collection. This ensured consistent reflection with crisis-affected people throughout the process and increased our ability to capture complexity and enhance accountability. Read More...

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