Cash and Voucher Assistance (CVA) for Water Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH)

Cash and Voucher Assistance (CVA) is defined as the direct provision of cash and/or vouchers to individuals, households or groups to enable economic access to goods and services. Market-based programming (MPB), or interventions, are understood to be projects that work through or that support local markets. Cash and voucher assistance is a modality that can be utilized within the spectrum of Market Based Programming in various ways. It can assist the demand side, such as providing cash to children’s caregivers to increase their financial capacity to access Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene (WASH) goods and services in time of crisis. It can also support the supply side, such as providing grants to WASH vendors to restock their products after a crisis. Additionally, cash can support WASH related services and infrastructure, for example, by providing cash grants to transporters or warehouse owners to facilitate their services. CVA and MBP have seen increasing use in humanitarian response, including in the WASH sector. This collection shares resources on case studies, findings, and research on using cash transfers alongside WaSH interventions, including to attain WaSH outcomes.