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

The program provides digital unconditional cash transfers delivered through mobile money to support micro-entrepreneurs, market traders, smallholder farmers, and the rural poor. The activity seeks to serve individuals directly affected by the Ebola virus epidemic or living in communities that suffered heavily during that time. The specific objectives of the activity are to improve food security of targeted households, protect livelihoods by reducing negative coping strategies, and reduce protracted economic shocks for targeted entities. To achieve these objectives, GiveDirectly has received lists from partners, including the National Ebola Survivors Network, and has conducted preliminary verification checks on all lists received to date. The majority of remaining checks will be completed via field verification processes, which launched this month. GiveDirectly has sent 17,514 payments and 135,733,500 Liberian dollars to 7,191 verified recipients so far. The recipients are primarily market traders or micro-entrepreneurs, with 80.2% being women and 17.4% being youth. The most common expenditure among recipients is buying things for an existing business, followed by education for someone else and food. Recipients have also reported spending on agricultural inputs, starting new businesses, and adding to their savings. Progress to date indicates that GiveDirectly has nearly tripled the number of individual transfers sent since program inception, increased recipients paid to date by 56%, and launched field verification to prevent exclusion of recipients without SIMs. The percentage of recipients that report bribery or theft from program inception to date has decreased from 2.2% to 1.4%. However, the percentage of recipients who understand key details of the activity has decreased slightly from 85.4% to 83.9%. GiveDirectly has also observed continued improvement in operational quality metrics due to ongoing communication efforts and deeper engagement with partners. The percentage of recipients who report receiving their transfers has improved to 97.5%, and the percentage of recipients who are able to withdraw their transfers has improved to 99.0%. The speed of grant delivery has also improved, with 97.6% of recipients receiving their first payment within 40 days of first contact.