From poverty to power - Oxfam-Québec

4 RISK AND VULNERABILITY SOCIAL PROTECTIONCASH TRANSFERSWhat do hungry people need? Food would seem to be the obviousanswer, but poor people often prefer cash, because it allows them tomake their own choices about how best to improve their own situation:what and when to invest and consume. It is also more consistent witha rights-based approach to social protection. Increasingly, cash transfersare supplanting in-kind transfers – for example, cash for work isreplacing food-for-work programmes, and school subsidies are startingto displace school feeding programmes.In response to predictions of acute food insecurity across parts ofSouthern Africa in 2005–06, Oxfam decided to implement cash transferprogrammes as an alternative to emergency food aid in Malawi andZambia, covering a total of about 20,000 households. Subsequentevaluations showed that neither project encountered any majorsecurity problems: the cash was delivered and spent safely.In both countries, the vast majority of the cash transfers werespent on food, mainly maize. People also made small but sometimescrucial non-food expenditures. In Malawi, the cash enabled people topurchase the subsidised inputs provided through a governmentagricultural input voucher scheme. In Zambia, where spending onhealth and education was important, NGOs’ efforts complementedthe Zambian government’s social protection programme, which paysthe poorest 10 per cent of communities in one district of SouthernProvince $6 per person per month, a minimal safety net against theworst forms of deprivation. 19In Viet Nam, Oxfam went one step further, deciding to givesubstantial cash lump sums to some 500 poor households in eightdeprived villages, and monitoring how the villagers spent the money.The top six uses were clearing debts (thereby freeing up future incomefrom the burden of debt repayments), buying livestock, repairing andbuilding houses, paying for school fees and books, buying seeds andfertilisers for agriculture, and paying for health care. These resultsdemonstrate how, given the chance, poor people invest in the future,and how varied and unpredictable their needs are: a dozen elderlypeople opted to spend the money on buying coffins, thereby ensuringthat they could live out their days in the knowledge that they would211