USAID GIVEDIRECTLY I APRIL MONTHLY PROGRESS 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 overarching 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. During the reporting period from March 15 to April 15, 2021, GiveDirectly continued to receive partner lists, conducted further investigations into issues identified with the National Ebola Survivors Network list, and nearly tripled the number of individuals paid transfers since program inception. Field verification detected potential gaming on BRAC lists to be investigated further next month. Follow-up data indicates that an estimated 75.5% of recipients paid to date are market traders or microentrepreneurs, 20.5% are smallholder farmers, 75.1% are women, and 16.9% are youth. The most common expenditure among recipients is buying things for an existing business (56.0% of recipients), followed by education for someone else (28.9%) and food (28.2%). GiveDirectly has sent 31,076 payments and 240,839,000 Liberian dollars to 20,511 verified recipients so far. The percentage of recipients that report bribery or theft from program inception to date has decreased from 1.4% reported last month to 1.0%. GiveDirectly also sought and received approvals from USAID to adjust the definition of customer indicator 5.3, recipient comprehension. With this updated definition, the portion of recipients who understand key details of the Activity is 93.9%. The only quality metric that declined significantly during the reporting period was the speed of transfer delivery, with 80.0% of recipients receiving their transfers on time, compared to 97.6% in the previous month. The Activity proposes a digital cash relief program to quickly help the most vulnerable populations, including micro-entrepreneurs, market traders, smallholder farmers, and the rural poor, suffering acutely from the economic fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic. The specific objectives are: (i) Improve food security of targeted households; (ii) protect livelihoods by reducing negative coping strategies, and (iii) reduce protracted economic shocks for targeted entities. GiveDirectly has received over 69,000 potential recipients to date and conducted preliminary verification checks on all lists received to date, with the exception of the most recent list received from Concern, which will be verified in the next reporting period. Field verification activities have uncovered potential gaming in BRAC lists, where individuals within BRAC communities reported to GiveDirectly field officers that they were told to pretend to be someone else during BRAC's consent collection exercise. In all cases identified so far, the name on the list is legitimate and corresponds to an individual who took part in a BRAC program, but has since either left the community or withdrawn from the program. GiveDirectly is continuing to run both phone-based and field verification processes on potential recipients to ensure data quality, identity verification, and eligibility issues are addressed.