CASH grants: help where it is most needed

70% of the population of Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk regions live below the poverty line. The protracted conflict has caused prices to rise and income to go down due to lower salaries, increased unemployment and suspended pensions and social benefits.

As it is the 5th year of the conflict, with not much savings left, some people try to leave the conflict affected areas in search of a new peaceful existence. Dorcas continuously tries to find these new areas where people move to and are in need of assistance.

Some people stay in their homes close to the contact line, where there is high risk of shelling and fighting. These areas are hard to reach for Dorcas staff; however, this does not stop Dorcas from helping people who live in these areas. In these exceptional cases, Dorcas works through local volunteers from these high risk areas that have been trained by Dorcas staff to do the vulnerability assessments in their home towns.

People are in need of affordable shelter in new locations, or money to repair their shelter damaged by the shelling, money to buy food and medicine, which is hard to arrange because of lack of finances. Therefore, the best modality to help them get back on their feet as well as ease their life is multi-purpose cash assistance.

Dorcas Ukraine continues its active lead and implementation of Ukraine Joint Response IV together with its consortium partners. The amount of money per person is in accordance with the recommendations of UN OCHA Cash Working Group (CWG). Dorcas Ukraine is an active member of CWG which makes the coordination of cash activities well organized.

Grants are distributed in 2 rounds, 2 months value each. Before the payments, each potential beneficiary is visited at home, and the beneficiary data is cross-checked with other cash providing actors to prevent duplication of services. All transfers are carried out via UkrPoshta, the Ukrainian postal service.

The first cash transfers were made in June. By the end of this year, 2500 of the most vulnerable and conflict affected people will be reached with cash grants to help them cover their immediate basic needs and reduce the existing use of negative coping mechanisms among severely vulnerable people.

26 July 2018