3.6: Scaling-up the use of CVA

This episode explores the journey of an organization that has embraced cash assistance as a core approach from its inception. It discusses the benefits and challenges associated with starting with a cash-centric mindset and examines the role of evidence, partnerships, and addressing fraud in scaling up CVA programmes.

This episode features insights from:

 ·  Lydiah Wangechi: Regional Director at GiveDirectly

·   Sindhy Obias: Executive Director of the Assistance and Cooperation for Community Resilience and Development (ACCORD)

Key themes explored in this episode:

 · The value of a strong emphasis on research and evidence in establishing credibility and building confidence in cash assistance.

·  The importance of close collaboration with governments, moving beyond seeking approvals to establishing true partnerships.

·  The need to address skepticism and build trust among communities who may be unfamiliar with unconditional cash transfers.

·  Contextual factors that have helped y increased familiarity and acceptance of cash transfers.

·  The challenges of expanding programmes geographically, particularly in areas with limited infrastructure and connectivity.

·  The importance of ensuring robust systems and processes to mitigate the risk of fraud, particularly as organisations grow.

·  The importance of transparency and sharing lessons learned from challenges such as fraud cases.

Listen in to discover the lessons learned and ongoing challenges faced by an organisation fully committed to the use of cash its inception , and how this contributes to scaling up the use of cash in development and humanitarian settings.

Transcript

Episode 3.6: Scaling-up the use of CVA

Guests: Wangechi and Sindhy

Karen: Hello and welcome to our fifth and final episode of this series of CashCast. I am your host, Karen Peachey. 

This series we’ve been exploring what it takes to turn a vision of change, into practice. We’ve spoken to people across the sector about how to change mindsets, put enabling policies and processes in place, and mitigate risks when making organizational changes to increase the use of cash. 

In this episode, we take a different angle and explore what happens when an organization starts-up with a belief in cash and so doesn't have to change from a non-cash way of working. 

With a cash mindset from the start, is it all smooth sailing to increase the use of cash or are there still challenges?

For this discussion, I'm pleased to welcome Lydiah Wangechi, Regional director at GiveDirectly, who supports their work in Rwanda, Malawi, and Morocco, as well as having experience in Kenya and Mozambique. She will walk us through GiveDirectly’s journey to scale-up the use of cash in the region, how they faced resistance to the implementation of unconditional cash in some contexts, and the role of evidence and research in this process. 

Let’s get started!

- Transitional music - 

Karen: GiveDirectly is a relatively new player in the humanitarian space with an impressive record in scaling-up the use of cash. Wangechi currently oversees GiveDirectly's work in three countries: In Malawi, where they manage over $30 million annually for poverty alleviation and humanitarian work. In Rwanda, where they operate a $15-20 million annual budget, cover all provinces and collaborate closely with the government. And in Morocco, with work funded mainly by the US government, where they focus on supporting women’s cooperatives to enhance their economic activities. 

So, Wangechi how you get there? What's it taken to get to that sort of scale? 

Wangechi: In terms of what does it take, I think from my perspective, what it has taken is, one, give directly was started with a very heavy emphasis on research and evidence. So very much evidence driven when we got into this field because there were a lot of people who were a bit... skeptical about cash as an intervention and so largely grounded on evidence and producing rigorous studies that you know are looking at what's the impact of cash in different ecosystems and I think for give directly that that has been our core and has been very important to our journey to date. 

The second thing that I think we have learned along the journey it's definitely not how we started. But I think realizing that we needed to work quite closely with governments, not just for approvals, but really a deep partnership and collaboration with the governments in the sense that if you're looking at, our mission is to accelerate the end of extreme poverty in this part of the world. And if you're going to do that, I think an appreciation that that's the government's core mandate.

And therefore, if we were going to do that as a development partner, then we needed to work hand in hand with the governments to be able to do that. So I think that's a realization that has come somewhere in that journey, a bit too late probably, but all the same, a lesson that we have fully appreciated. 

And I think the last one is just working with other partners. I think realizing that, you know, the issues we are tackling are quite difficult. They are systemic, you know, and looking out for other partners who are also working towards the same objectives and figuring out how can we collaborate, how can we work with each other to, you know, to drive impact for the people that we want to serve or for the recipients, as we call them at GiveDirectly.

Karen: This is something we have heard a lot in this series: that pushing for change around cash is a journey - a learning process with existing narratives and barriers to that need to be challenged. So for GiveDirectly you approached these challenges using research and evidence to make the case for cash and shake off misconceptions. But who was it you needed to persuade?

Wangechi: I think a mix of people from, you know, development actors who felt, you know, that this is, this doesn't conform to sort of like the narrative that, you know, we've had in the development sector, which has been, you know, let's teach people how to fish rather than giving them a fish.

I think governments as well. And especially when you talk about large lump sum cash transfers, I think most governments are familiar with social protection type of cash transfers…I think even the funders on the funding side as well, we would talk to, especially institutional funders, were less excited about, you know, large cash transfers. 

And even recipients, surprisingly, recipients as well, the people we, the communities at the beginning were also skeptical because, they... couldn't almost trust as at the beginning that we were going to be giving them cash with no conditions, that it wasn't alone. It wasn't, you know, with conditions. They were quite skeptical as well in the beginning because nobody had ever trusted them with cash transfers and giving sort of like the agency back to them. So that was different as well for them.

Karen: So the skepticism was not only coming from government officials, development actors and donors but from the recipient communities themselves. 

Sindhy, who has over 21 years of experience in community-based humanitarian and development work, is currently the executive director of Accord, a humanitarian organization based in the Philippines. Accord has also been pro cash since it started, and Sindy shares with us that they also find recipient communities are not always in favour of cash – though in their case, the reasons are different.

Sindhy: Cash is not always preferred modality for some communities. The reason why is that we work mostly in these types of communities where systems and mechanisms to enable cash transfer programming are not yet present. And often these are the areas with least access to basic services. The situations are aggravated by their exposure to various hazards, their tropical cyclones, landslides, even armed conflict and violence.

There was an instance when we went to an isolated community of indigenous peoples. The poorest households received cash grants to support their needs, but the recipients have to traverse pretty loose roads and hike for a day to go to their town center just to claim cash and buy the essential supplies that they need for their families. There's a lot of risks involved there and protection concerns raised in that. And also in practical terms, in other remote communities where vehicle service are available, the people have to spend almost half of the money they receive on transportation. 

All these concerns may significantly erode the intended benefits of the assistance. So yeah, it's not always preferred option, I can say, for some communities.

Karen: So in the very remote communities Sindy is working with, the concerns stem from very practical reasons – given the lack of infrastructure of access payments and so on. In this situation, while providing other forms of assistance, Sindy and team are also advocating with stakeholders to improve infrastructure to address many community concerns.  

Meanwhile, the communities Wangechi was working with were different – it wasn't access issues that were the problem, it was the fact that communities couldn't believe they were being offered cash without strings attached.  

So how was that addressed?

Wangechi: With communities, I think it's largely being seen as a credible partner and staying in and with the communities. So for example, field officers are largely recruited from the communities that we work in. They speak the local language, they come from those communities.

And so I think that that to some extent did help us to get some inroads in within the communities and for more acceptance because our field officers are the sons and the daughters of you know of the people that you know we are trying to support. So I think that helped I think also working once the government was bought in and we do work with the government departments across you know all the way from the village level to the national level you know. So we try to engage the whole chain, you know, all the way to the village levels. And so everybody, we had to spend a lot of time educating people about cash transfers and sort of like even sharing the evidence behind it and the philosophy behind it. And very quickly people began to say things like, you know, especially the young people would tell us, I also send money home, right? So why is this different?

I send my mother cash transfer every month and I don't put conditions on it. So this is not any different. And so I think conversations at community level, conversations with governments, I think all that helped to bring people along, plus the evidence, plus, you know, I think overall it was also at the time, you know, mobile money was also becoming quite a big thing in Africa, whether it's -Pesa in Kenya or the other mobile money platform in other countries. So people are becoming sort of like familiar with this idea of transferring cash for whatever reasons. And so that I think also facilitated sort of like this movement towards adoption of cash transfers in these regions.

Karen: So, building trust was a large part of what helped with community acceptance, aided by the momentum created by the adoption of mobile money in some places. But how did you go about addressing the resistance you met from other stakeholders?   

Wangechi: I think the sector as a whole was going through a moment where cash transfers were becoming quite, quite acceptable as a development approach or as a development intervention, beginning with governments. I think if you remember back those days when especially African governments when lobbying with IMF and the World Bank were asking for more agency and saying, don't give us money with conditions. You need to trust us to own our own development pathway. 

So there was already some momentum and some...you know, change and some dysfunction with sort of like how the development sector as a whole has been, has been designed. So I think there was, there were already some movements there and some questioning about, you know, the sector has been here for the last 60 years. Are we seeing change? I think a bit of it was also fatigue, people feeling like, you know, we've been doing the same things over a long period of time. Some of these countries are actually poorer than when we started.

And so I think people were beginning to question, you know, what's working, what's not working. And so I think that provided a very enabling environment for that. But I think for GiveDirectly, the evidence probably was the strongest asset in the sense that, you know, people can argue philosophically about many things, but when you present evidence, you know, it's hard to push back on numbers and evidence, and especially if it's a rigorous study that has been done. So I think that's...probably what has helped, especially with the institution of funders and also with governments. I think that created some momentum there. 

Karen: As you've said, part of changing minds around cash has been constantly showing the evidence that it works. At GiveDirectly, you're well known for your evidenced based approach and randomized controlled trials – also known as RCTs.  Can you talk us through the positives and challenges you've encountered with this?

Wangechi: I think that the positives have been that the fact that we've been able to bring people along. I think at the very early days of GiveDirectly, a lot of the studies were benchmarking studies. People would come and say, are you telling me that actually cash is better than this training program that we've been running for 15 years? And if that's what you're saying, can we do a head-to-head sort of benchmarking study?  

I think maybe the challenges have been around, especially with communities, it's very hard to explain to a community why, the whole concept around an RCT, right? Because there will always be people who it means they are not receiving an intervention for the sake of advancing…learning and for the sake of this RCT. So I think that, I think for GiveDirectly, we've always held a very high bar for, you know, things or questions that justify an RCT because of the ethical concerns around it. And so, you know, I think as a sector, we must always hold a very high bar for, you know, what are the situations that warrant an RCT and the good coming out of it, you know, must outweigh the possible negative effects or ethical questions that might be there... And, you know, once there is sort of, you know, a conviction around the usefulness of the RCT or the learning that will come out of it, then we'll see more adoption. But I think generally you don't want to do an RCT, you know, on every...in every community or for every sort of maybe research studies. I think those should be few and should be, there should be a very high bar for that, for sure.

Karen: So, evidence was used in the early days to make the case and engage with stakeholders and it’s still a key part of how you work. Of course, your growth in the use of cash has not just been achieved by creating evidence. What are some of the other big challenges you've faced in scaling up your cash programmes?

Wangechi: I think every organization, you know, has challenges as it grows. And especially for us, it's both in terms of in most of the countries, in some of the countries where we currently operate, we want to go deeper, we want to accelerate the end of extreme poverty in those countries. And so, you know, going to like every district or...every province in the country and so expanding our reach both in the countries where we operate by also adding in new countries. 

So for example, if you think about, you know, distributing cash transfers in places where sometimes there isn't coverage, phone coverage and all that. We've had in some areas to actually set up telco masks in places like Liberia because some of the areas where we needed to work didn't have a connection. 

I think telcos are a key stakeholder for us because of we're using mobile money. 

We have had to deepen our relationship with them in terms of even educating the communities where we're working in terms of how to use mobile money. We've had challenges of, I think these days we have a lot of cyber theft, for example, in some places they call it sim swapping, but it's basically, you know, cybercrimes that are also targeting mobile money sort of sector... Some of these communities haven't interacted so much with mobile money because this is the first time for some of them, they're getting a chance to interact with the local economy because of the levels of poverty. And so that has been a big challenge and a learning curve for us as an organization in terms of how we support those communities, but also work with the telcos to provide connectivity, but also to protect our recipients from some of these crimes. 

I think the other thing internally is also figuring out fundraising. When you're growing at that scale, we can no longer rely on high net worth individuals. We also have to talk to institutional donors. And I think that has also been a learning journey for us in terms of how do you sell cash, especially for large lump sum transfers to an institutional donor, and especially in a context that is not necessarily a humanitarian context. 

I think other than that, there's always the challenge of making sure you have the right talent within the organization as you grow. In all this context, be it DRC, be it Liberia, so how do you attract good talent in all those very diverse contexts and how do you keep that team motivated and excited, even in very challenging contexts? And as an organization, you also start to mature in terms of your own HR processes, people processes. You used to be in one country, you're now in 12 countries with very different legal contexts, very different HR norms and practices, cultural contexts as well. And so I think there's a maturity that is required of the organization as you get to that level.

I also think in terms of government relations, ......we've also had to have our own journey in terms of maturing. I think when we started the year, the only interaction we had with government was give us permits and approve us to work in this area. And it was great to wear off, we'll do our work. And then we realized actually that's not strategic, that's not the way to operate. And there were some painful lessons throughout that period. We got shut down in one of the countries where we operate by the government because we hadn't done enough government engagement for them to fully trust us, for them to fully understand what it is that we were trying to do. And so we've had those painful lessons. And so I think our maturity has also been understanding how to speak to government and, you know, and understanding what their priorities are and figuring out how we can work with them to leverage cash to achieve the same objectives.

Karen: It’s interesting to hear how many of the ‘external’ challenges you've faced mirror those of organizations that have a very different history and are transitioning from using other kinds of aid to using cash. It would be good to hear a bit more about how GiveDirectly went about getting government partners on board with CVA.

Wangechi: it has been definitely a learning journey. As I said at the beginning, you know, we would just seek approvals to operate and then we would go do our thing. But very quickly realize that the mandate that we or the mission that we have is, you know, is primarily the government's mandate, which is to accelerate or lift people out of extreme poverty in these countries…And so I think .... as we grew both in terms of budget sizes, but also in terms of our reach in those countries, we quickly realized that there is something more we could do in terms of supporting those governments to achieve their national ambition to accelerate the end of poverty. And one was by providing technical support. 

So I think as we did, you know, a lot of cash transfers in those places, the government, some government officials would come to us and say, you know, we've been working on this social protection, you know, program. It's really difficult to do targeting…And so as we had those conversations, we found places where we could provide technical assistance to government to do their own social protection programming... So I think that was one way that, you know, government began to trust us. We didn't present ourselves as competing with government, we saw ourselves as, you know, eventually actually we would want governments to be able to take on the work that we do. And so if there's an opportunity to share learnings, to share expertise, you know, help them build the pipes literally, to be able to do their cash transfers in a more efficient, transparent way. That's something that we welcomed.

I think the other thing was basically, you know, in some of those countries, our programs have become embedded into the national graduation strategies. So we basically went to government and said, we are here to help you do what you want to do in terms of, you know, lifting people out of extreme poverty. 

…And then I think the other thing that happened once we did that is that we were also able to leverage the other government intervention. So, you know, government will have, for example, agriculture extension officers in some of these villages. So how can we leverage or take advantage of, you know, all these other interventions that the government is providing to allow whatever development agendas the recipients have to be, I guess the way to think about it is that if you are doing cash transfers, for example, in a village and there are no roads in that village, you probably want the government to build roads, to build bridges for that community to successfully participate in the local economy you know, and for the dollars that they are receiving or the shillings that they are receiving to go even a bit further. So we started looking at, you know, how do we be a bit more strategic in terms of the areas where we were going and coordinating a bit more closely, not just with government, but other partners as well, so that there is that enabling environment. So not working in isolation and making sure that we are sort of pulling in other actors as well who are providing complementary services that allow the community to fully benefit from all those interventions.

Karen: In episode 4 of this series, we talked about the risks around CVA, and the risk of fraud and diversion. Last year, GiveDirectly faced a big fraud case in relation to cash transfers, a case that you responded to openly – sharing the news with the sector and working to learn from it. Can you tell us a bit more about what happened?

Wangechi: I think the DRC is one of the places where our systems broke in a scale that was unprecedented and to some extent very shocking, both internally and I think externally for sure. You know, we had built this system that had all these checks and balances, but for some reason, you know, all those checks and balances failed in this very instance largely because there was collusion of staff. So I think we realized that this whole system depends on the fact that we have all these teams that are checking on each other. 

But in this case, these teams colluded across different departments to defraud the recipients in DRC. And the fact that it was also, we were working in an area that is conflict prone. And therefore I think on our side, the reflection was how do you, you know, how do we need to adapt our processes for places like DRC? And it's a lesson for places like Mozambique as well, especially as we start to go to the Northern parts that are conflict prone, where you can't always, you know, wake up one morning and do a field visit, a random field visit to check on recipients, where it's difficult for recipients to reach us. 

How do you make sure that they can still access sort of like maybe senior management in case there's collision at other levels? So I think that was a huge lesson for us. And we wanted to be transparent about it because we think as a development sector, there's a lot of that happening. And unless we can feel comfortable to share, that's the only way we can learn and start to address some of those barriers and some of those challenges. And our hope in coming forward with that challenge was that one, we can be honest that we don't have it all together, there are things we are learning, but also hopefully that it can be a lesson for anybody else who's operating in a similar context, doing cash transfers. We would be more than happy to share sort of our reflections and our learnings as well. And our hope is that it makes us stronger as an organization, but also as a sector.

Karen: Great, thanks Wangechi.

That brings us towards the end of this episode – and also the end of this series.

We started this series asking the question: What does it take to make the changes needed in an organization to scale up the use of cash assistance?

It's been great speaking to Wangechi about GiveDirectly's journey as an organization who were committed to the use of cash from the beginning. Providing an interesting contrast to other discussions in this series where most of our guests have had to convince people internally about the need scale up the use of cash.  

All the same, GiveDirectly still faced many change management issues as they've worked to scale up the use of cash. They faced internal challenges with systems and processes, and external issues working with different stakeholders and, just has some others have reflected in other episodes, they've learnt as they've gone along.   

Over the course of this series, we’ve learnt from our guests that it takes clarity of vision and courage at many levels to transform mindsets and push for change.  

 We hope you enjoyed this series. We are very keen to hear your thoughts and inputs, so  please feel free to reach out to us through our different channels indicated in the description of this   episode. Until next time!