Implementing Cash-Based Interventions: A Guideline for Aid Workers

The response to humanitarian crisis or emergency situations has, in most cases, taken the form of commodity (food, shelter, seeds and tools and a variety of other necessary goods, classed collectively by humanitarian agencies as ‘non-food items’) distributions to affected populations.
However, a growing body of experience and literature shows an interest in alternatives to inkind
distributions, where people are given cash or vouchers instead, which they use to acquire
the items they need. In this manual, these are broadly called “cash-based interventions2”.
Action Contre la Faim (ACF) has been implementing food security projects in various countries
for more than twenty-five years. These have included some cash-based interventions but these
have been limited in number as compared to other food security interventions.
The purpose of this module to provide ACF with a practical guide for implementing cashbased
interventions, by reviewing key literature and thinking on such schemes and drawing
lessons learnt from practical cases. To enrich the analysis and benefit from other agencies’
experiences, case studies have been taken from both ACF and other NGOs