A Guide to Cash for Work Programming

Church World Service (CWS) worked with communities in Tana River, Baringo and West Pokot counties in Kenya to implement Cash for Work (CfW) projects in response to the 2017 drought emergency. This guide documents best practices and lessons learnt to guide and provide field facilitators as well as other interested actors in the development and humanitarian aid sector, with ideas for designing appropriate strategies and actions for CfW programming. Suggested tools for use during the implementation of a CfW programme have been provided as annexes. 

With the unprecedented succession of extreme weather events such as drought that have caused immense economic disruption and significant human misery, CWS and its partners under the ACT Alliance-Kenya forum have made it possible to employ cash based approaches to respond to the Kenya’s drought situation. Through mobile money transfers, targeted households in Baringo, Tana River and West Pokot counties were able to receive money for each day’s work, and this money helped ensure that they could buy food and other essential supplies needed to get them through the drought period.