It leads to a lasting increase in income, it helps them build assets such as housing and livestock, and it reduces health issues such as malnutrition, especially among children.Ĭritics will claim that cash distributed without conditions will be wasted but the evidence doesn’t support this view. In fact, the Cash Learning Partnership estimates that $2.8 billion was spent on cash and voucher programming in 2016, up 40% from 2015 and nearly double since 2014 (we don’t yet have the 2017 or 2018 numbers but it is likely to have continued to increase).ĭistributing cash in a humanitarian crisis is not only more empowering, it reflects the view that the experts on what people need in a crisis are the people that are themselves affected.Īnd as Bregman demonstrates, there is an enormous body of evidence that giving the poor money to help them survive crisis and escape poverty works. In Lebanon, we used a basic MasterCard to allow thousands of Syrian refugees to buy whatever they wanted in hundreds of local shops.

In Somalia, we provided US$100 a month via basic mobile phones to nomadic herders displaced by drought. Critics will claim that cash distributed without conditions will be wasted but the evidence doesn’t support this view.Īt Save the Children, we are involved in dozens of such programs around the world.

Utopias for realists