Pacific Regional Cash Working Group

Cash and Voucher Assistance (CVA) continues to be an expanding modality for the delivery of humanitarian assistance in the Pacific region. The humanitarian partners have used CVA along with other modalities to support the lives of people affected by disasters due to Its role as an efficient, effective, and flexible mode of addressing the humanitarian needs during all stages of the disaster life cycle have enhanced, while strengthening livelihoods, markets, and local economy or long-terms sustainable results in a dignified way with the inclusion of gender and disabilities mainstreaming and targeted actions. Contributing also to the recovery, resilience, and peacebuilding agendas.

Humanitarian and development agencies have been using cash and voucher assistance as an assistance modality in the Pacific since late 2009. The Regional Cash Working group in the Pacific was established in 2017 as a working group with a term of reference, annual work plan, and secretariat managed by WFP, after being inactive for some time, the PRCWG was re-invigorated in Feb 2021, currently, PRCWG has a full time dedicated PRCWG coordinator deployed by CashCap and hosted by WFP.

The PRCWG endorsed by Pacific Humanitarian Team (PHT) is a group for knowledge sharing and dissemination to Pacific development and humanitarian agencies and regional coordination bodies such as the Pacific Humanitarian Team, Regional Inter-Cluster Coordination Group. It also provides the opportunity for regional coordination and harmonisation of approaches used by cash practitioners and Country Cash Working Groups in the Pacific.

The Pacific Regional Cash Working Group (PRCWG) therefore seeks to strengthen collaboration on CVA in both disaster preparedness and response, as well as financial access & inclusion, social protection, and other economic inclusion and/or market-based programming involving the transfer of cash or voucher payments to households. The PRCWG is intended to complement and connect with the in-country formal coordination structures of the Government and the international humanitarian community.

The Pacific Regional Cash working groups focused on 4 core Strategic Objectives:

1. SO1: Act as a regional resource base for knowledge sharing, including the curation of existing research and guidance, mapping of stakeholders, capacity and resources, and the launch of capacity building initiatives.
2. SO2: Grow and establish a regional network of UN, private sector, public sector and non-government stakeholders engaged and interested in cash and voucher assistance, as a means of improving outreach at the regional and global level, encouraging partnerships, communication and cross-regional, cross-sector exchange and learning.
3. SO3: Perform a technical advisory function to inform the design and implementation of Cash and Voucher Assistance at the country level.
4. SO4: Engage in and promote advocacy efforts throughout the Pacific region to raise awareness of, and resources for the use of Cash and Voucher Assistance in pre-and post-disaster contexts.