Impact Evaluation of the Multipurpose Cash Assistance Programme

As we enter the sixth year of the Syrian conflict, Syrian refugees living in Lebanon has now totaled over one million. Nearly 60% of all financial resources pledged by UN agencies and INGOs were to secure basic assistance for Syrian refugees, mainly to support them in meeting food and healthcare needs. In the context of this protracted crisis, humanitarian actors continuously face resource shortages to help affected populations meet their basic needs. Therefore, donors look for cost-efficient yet effective solutions and rely on the available evidence to make their funding decisions. In the Lebanese context, multipurpose cash assistance (MCA) has been used extensively to meet refugees’ basic needs, ranging from food, shelter, health, hygiene, and other items, in a manner that allows refugees’ choice of spending priorities.

The Lebanon Cash Consortium (LCC) consists of six international NGOs, including Save the Children, the International Rescue Committee, Solidarités International, CARE, ACTED, and World Vision International. Their mandate is to provide MCA to economically vulnerable Syrian households. During 2015, 20,000 households had been assisted with MCA out of 25,000 that were found eligible for MCA. The remaining 5,000 were not enrolled in the MCA program reportedly due to lack of funding. This study aims to measure the impact of the MCA delivered by LCC at a six-month midline of assistance on several proxies of physical and material well-being, encompassing food security, health, hygiene, and housing.