Ukraine Cash Working Group Overview, March 2022

This fact sheet provides a brief overview of the Ukraine Cash Working Group and the roll-out of MPC for the current emergency response.

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The Ukraine Cash Working Group (CWG) was established in 2016 and is currently co-chaired by ACTED and OCHA. It is a technical working group within the Inter Cluster Coordination Group (ICCG) under the overall strategic and programmatic direction of the Humanitarian Country Team (HCT). The CWG focuses on the operational coordination of Multi-Purpose Cash (MPC) programming and the support to the coherence of the use of cash as a modality in the wider humanitarian response.

Cash and Voucher Assistance in Ukraine

Even before the conflict escalation in February 2022, evidence showed that conflict-affected people identified cash transfer programming as a preferred type of assistance. Since 2015, MPC has been and continues to be an important multi-sectoral response modality in Ukraine, representing the most appropriate and timely modality to addressing the immediate multiple needs of the affected population. It is also considered a modality that upholds the dignity and preferences of affected people Following the escalation, the HCT unanimously agreed to use MPC as a preferred/default modality (wherever operationally feasible) to scale up the response for the first three-month period of the Flash Appeal to accompany and reinforce service delivery. For this rapid response emergency, MPC is the preferred modality to effectively scale up urgently needed assistance as it supports people in meeting their multiple basic needs, while also contributing to local economic recovery by injecting cash into functioning markets that offer goods produced locally.

Rolling out MPC in Ukraine

The CWG is supporting the emergency roll out MPC in the country. The CWG has defined the MEB, transfer value, and set up thematic tasks teams in order to establish cash feasibility and to implement MPC as soon as possible to affected populations.

Minimum Expenditure Basket (MEB)

The CWG has a Minimum Expenditure Basket (MEB) which determines a household’s requirement to meet its basic needs and average cost. Since 2017, the MEB has been fully aligned with that of the Government of Ukraine using the Ministry of Social Policy’s data on minimum expenditure which is regularly updated to reflect the market dynamic as a benchmark for calculation.