Pacific Regional Cash Working Group (PRCWG)

Cash and Voucher Assistance (CVA) continues to attract growing interest as a modality for the delivery of humanitarian assistance in the Pacific region. The use of CVA by humanitarian partners along with other modalities to support the lives of people affected by disasters conforms to the fact that CVA is an efficient, effective, and flexible mode for addressing the humanitarian needs during all stages of the disaster life cycle. CVA enhances the local economy by strengthening livelihoods and markets as well as ensuring longer-term sustainability in a dignified way. It also allows for greater ability to mainstream gender and disability through targeted actions, thus supporting an integrated and inclusive approach to recovery, resilience, and peacebuilding. The use of the CVA as an assistance modality by humanitarian and development agencies has been prevalent in the region since late 2009.

The Pacific Regional Cash Working Group (PRCWG) aims to contribute to improving the quality of humanitarian assistance by influencing cash and voucher assistance (CVA) policy and practice, act as a regional resource base for knowledge sharing, including the curation of existing research and guidance, mapping of stakeholders, capacity and resources, to launch of capacity building initiatives, grow and establish a regional network of UN, private sector, public sector and non-government stakeholders engaged and interested in cash and voucher assistance. Correspondingly, the PRCWG seeks to strengthen collaboration on CVA in both disaster preparedness and response, as well as support financial access and inclusion, linking Humanitarian CVA to social protection, and other economic inclusion and/or market-based programming which involves the transfer of cash or voucher payments to households. The PRCWG aims to complement and integrate the regional and national formal coordination structures of the government and the international humanitarian community under umbrella of Asia-Pacific Regional Cash Working Group. the PRCWG has a full-time dedicated Coordinator deployed by CashCap and hosted by WFP and an outline of activities operationalised through a Pacific Regional Cash Working Group Strategy 2022 - 2025. 

The PRCWG as part of the Pacific Humanitarian architecture provides evidence and recommendations to inform strategic, and technical decision-making. It reports to the Pacific Humanitarian Team (PHT) Principles and works closely with different Clusters and partners to mainstream CVA across sectoral and cross-cutting initiatives. The PRCWG has over 50 members, including representatives of national and international humanitarian and development agencies; government, donors, and the private sector organziations.

 If you are a Cash and Voucher Assistance Trainer and based in the Pacific, please write to us at rukiye.uysal@wfp.org