Cash Assistance Learnings from Sri Lanka's Crisis Response - Applicable Globally

The Sri Lanka Cash Working Group recently held a Learning Workshop to review the cash response during the 2022-2023 crisis. While focused on Sri Lanka, the lessons learned are widely relevant for global humanitarian action. 

I want to summarize some key universal takeaways:

💡 Improving government collaboration on social assistance is key, especially in protracted crises where linking to national systems matters.

💡 Regular market monitoring and dynamic transfer value setting based on this data is vital, particularly in high inflation environments.

💡 Enhancing community engagement through better messaging, accountability and participation mechanisms is relevant everywhere.

💡 Pre-agreements with financial service providers enable timely delivery, and exploring solutions for the undocumented is essential.

💡 Inter-agency preparedness on harmonization, markets, communities and financial services improves responses across contexts.

Kudos to Ricardo Lobo and the Cash Working Group in Sri Lanka for generating these insights from their experience. Reflecting systematically on what worked well and less well is invaluable for continuing to improve humanitarian outcomes globally.

While contexts differ, extracting universal best practices from crises through learning workshops is so important for the humanitarian community. Sri Lanka's experience provides multiple takeaways we can apply more broadly.

Let me know your takeaways! What other global learnings do you see from Sri Lanka's cash response that could inform assistance worldwide?