Unconditional Cash Transfer Activity Emergency Assistance to Populations Impacted by Covid-19

The Activity proposes a digital cash relief program to provide support to micro-entrepreneurs, market traders, smallholder farmers, and the rural poor. The goal is to protect the value of assets and avoid increases in debt by providing smaller, regular cash transfers that provide an alternative means of meeting basic needs. The Activity's specific goals and objectives are to improve food security of targeted households, protect livelihoods by reducing negative coping strategies, and reduce protracted economic shocks for targeted entities. GiveDirectly has received over 63,000 potential recipients to date, with 62.5% of whom were on lists received in the last month. The organization has sent 6,319 payments and 48,972,250 Liberian dollars to 4,606 verified recipients so far. GiveDirectly has completed MoU/contract-signing with all 7 partners requiring these processes and received data from 9 of 10 partners identified for list provisions. The organization is verifying lists received to date, which has detected fraud in the list provided by the Liberia Marketing Association, surfaced data quality issues with lists provided by three partners, and identified one isolated flag in a fifth partner. GiveDirectly has continued initial list verification checks, including data quality checks, data accuracy checks, and screening for duplicates of all recipient phone numbers. Preliminary data from follow-up surveys indicates that the most common expenditure among recipients is buying things for an existing business (65.3% of recipients), followed by education for someone else (35.1%) and food (28.3%). 9.1% of surveyed recipients report starting a new business with their transfers and 6.7% have added to their savings. Initial follow-up data indicates that an estimated 89.3% of recipients paid to date are market traders or microentrepreneurs, 7.6% are smallholder farmers, 83.1% are women, and 17.8% are youth. GiveDirectly has observed that recent program communication efforts and deeper engagement with partners are improving operational quality metrics. 96.8% of surveyed recipients now report receiving their transfers, compared to 93.5% at the end of the last reporting period. 98.5% of recipients are now able to withdraw their transfers, compared to 94.0% reported last month. The percentage of recipients that report bribery or theft has decreased from 7.1% to 2.2%. Understanding of key details of the Activity has increased from 67.5% to 85.4% of recipients. The Activity's progress to date is as follows: 4,117 market traders and micro-entrepreneurs have been targeted, 352 smallholder farmers have been targeted, and 0 Ebola-affected recipients have been targeted. The total number of market traders, micro-entrepreneurs, and smallholder farmers targeted is 42,000 to 85,000, with 4,468 recipients having been targeted to date. The percentage of recipients who report registering for mobile money through this activity is not yet measurable, but is expected to be high. The number of individuals participating in USG-assisted group-based savings, micro-finance or lending programs is also not yet measurable, but is expected to be high.