ReliefWeb

Summary of major revisions made to emergency plan of action:

This DREF operation is being extended for additional 3 months bring the end date to 28 May 2021. This will ensure sufficient time to complete multi-purpose cash distribution as a pilot following SARC’s new procurement procedures, as well as completion of the monitoring and lessons learnt activities.

SARC team undertook a detailed assessment to decide piloting of the multi-purpose cash in emergency. However, a delay in completing the detailed assessment was caused by COVID-19 pandemic restriction measures and security concerns that affected the deployments of staff and volunteers to the field. As the target communities are from remote areas with high level of poverty, prior to the detailed assessment, SARC distributed food items to 256 villages and disseminated its mandates to the community leaders, stakeholders, and people to gain acceptance. These measures were essential and necessary to enable community access to SARC staff and volunteers. Furthermore, this is the first multi-purpose cash grant relief operation by SARC, as previously assistance has been in the form of non-food items (NFIs) and food parcels. The extended timeframe will ensure a due process with solid post distribution monitoring and feedback from the communities and stakeholders. The operating budget and response activities remain unchanged.