M&E Rapid Phone Survey: Access to Automated Teller Machines and redemption of WFP assistance - October 2019

Objectives and Methodology

Lebanon has been paralyzed by countrywide protests since 17 October 2019, with roadblocks and a general strike causing the shutdown of schools, banks, and most businesses.

Since assistance under WFP’s Country Strategic Plan (CSP) for Lebanon is overwhelmingly delivered through cash-based transfers, there was a concern under the current circumstances that (i) beneficiaries were not able to access ATMs and redeem assistance with their cards; (ii) beneficiaries could not access shops and buy basic food and non-food items using their cash entitlements; (iii) beneficiaries did experience security issues and were not otherwise overly affected by the crisis.

This quick survey was designed to get preliminary answers to these concerns form beneficiaries of WFP’s livelihoods programme. This programme was selected as it was the only one where cash transfers were made after the start of the protests (on 23 October), while cash transfers for other CSP components happened in early October and were not affected by the crisis.

Cash entitlements were loaded onto the cards of 1,177 livelihood programme beneficiaries by WFP’s financial service provider on 23 October. As a mitigation measure to avoid crowding at Automated Teller Machines (ATMs) and to allow enough time to replenish ATMs, beneficiaries were informed by SMS about the loading on three different days: on 23 October (391 beneficiaries), 24 October (392 beneficiaries), and 25 October (394 beneficiaries).

100 beneficiaries were randomly selected from each batch to reach a total of 300 beneficiary surveys. WFP attempted to contact them by phone for the survey two or three days after they received the SMS. Only 215 beneficiaries answered the calls, which represents the final sample (‘participants’) for the quick survey. Participants randomly selected are residents of 10 different districts (Akkar, Baalbeck, Chouf, El Metn, Jbeil, Kesrouan, Nabatieh, Tripoli, West Bekaa and Zahle ).