Purpose:

The purpose of this guidance is to support National Societies in demonstrating improved capacity and operational readiness to provide scalable and timely emergency cash transfer programming (CTP). This will be achieved when a National Society has trained and experienced staff and volunteers who are familiar with its tools and procedures, use them efficiently, and contribute to their adaptation and improvement. Some of the desirable outcomes would be:

• A National Society has a CTP preparedness plan of action (PoA) that is properly budgeted, resourced, and has clear activities and outputs.
• A National Society achieves the specific outputs planned in their PoA. These outputs are tailored to address each National Society’s unique opportunities and barriers, to be operationally ready to provide scalable emergency CTP.
• The National Society has a solid database of CTP trained and experienced staff and volunteers at headquarter and branch levels.
• CTP standard operating procedures (SOPs), systems and procedures are agreed, documented and widely available for all, training has been provided in their use and they are updated periodically or after each response, based on lessons learned.
• A National Society CTP toolkit has been developed, integrated with existing tools and shared with staff and volunteers (and with other humanitarian partners, in order to widen their knowledge, understanding and use). It is reviewed and updated as a result of ongoing preparedness and response actions.
• CTP communications materials are developed and widely available for National Society staff and volunteers to use and adapt.
• Learning from operations and responses is captured and procedures, tools and training materials are updated as necessary based on this learning.
• National Society CTP responses are coordinated both internally within the Movement and externally with other actors.

Overview:

The process of CTP preparedness has a number of parallel aspects. To reflect this, this guidance is organized along four parallel tracks, each of which contributes to the operational readiness of the National Society. CTP mainstreaming and preparedness activities need to focus on all four tracks to develop operational readiness capacity, although prioritization of activities will depend on the National Society’s own unique profile. The four tracks are:

• enabling systems for CTP preparedness
• programme tools for CTP preparedness
• resources and capacities for CTP preparedness
• communication and coordination for CTP preparedness.

While each National Society will forge its own path to CTP operational readiness, if they follow common guidance and put in place similar components (as identified through the pilots and outlined in this guidance) it will then be easier for representatives of different Movement actors to work effectively together in times of an international response.

Usage: Guidance for implementation

Audience: National Society Leaders and Staff