"There are times I would give my remaining 10 gourds to my children, then go to church all day and tell myself I was fasting; it helped me cope with the hunger."

Every month Belmise receives 2000 gourdes ($46) through her electronic voucher. She can then buy food for her and her family at participating food stores.. © 2013 CARE

Those are the heart-wrenching words of Belmise Petit, a 50-year-old mother of six who is one of beneficiaries of the Food for Peace-USAID food voucher program. Belmise doesn't have steady work – her severe arthritis pain makes it impossible for her to continue earning an income by doing laundry work.  Yet, she alone is the sole provider for the household and she struggles to find food for herself and her children.

"One day," she recalls, "I was feeling desperate, the children were hungry and I had nothing to give them. I resigned myself to go begging by the mayor's office. There was a lot of commotion when I got there. I went inside to see what it was about. I met a young lady who asked me if I was there to register for theprogram.I did not know what she meant. She went on to explain to me what it was about. I could not believe my ears. I felt like the sky thought God must have listened to my prayers and guided my feet there today. "

The Food for Peace-USAID food voucher program, implemented by CARE, helps meet the needs of the poorest of the poor by them providing electronic vouchers redeemable for food. Beneficiaries exchange the vouchers with merchants to obtain nutritionally-balanced foods. The program serves to not only provide healthy foods for participants but also allows beneficiaries to use whatever earn they do earn to on additional food and/or sustainable food sources, such as the purchase of livestock or land. 

In the first phase of the project, 12,000 beneficiaries were served in nine communities; 5,708 families in five more communities are being served in the second phase.

© 2013 CARE

Belmise now can go to the grocery store once a month. She uses her electronic voucher to buy items, such as rice, beans and cornmeal to feed her family, including her two grandchildren from her eldest daughter. Belmise also helps her neighbor, who's also struggling, but unlike Belmise, wasn't nominated to participate in the program. "We do what we can to help each other; she lives so close to me, I could never eat while knowing she's hungry."

When asked what she will do at the end of the six month project, she replies, "I pray to God every day for the responsible of this program. I ask him to cover them with blessings so they can continue to help us."

My name is Kiera and for the past three years, I've been the voice of CARE's social media on Facebook, Twitter and seven other social networks. I am also a Live Below The Line dropout. 

I've been tweeting and posting about the Global Poverty Project's Live Below The Line challenge since 2010, but this is the first year I was actually brave enough to try it.

While I, along with my fellow web team members, am an encyclopedia of knowledge on CARE's poverty-fighting work in 84 countries around the world, I sometimes feel a disconnect sitting at my desk in CARE's Atlanta headquarters. All of the things CARE does are happening thousands of miles away.

That's why I decided to take the challenge to live below the poverty line and eat and drink on just $1.50 a day for five days – like 1.4 billion people are forced to do every day.

I went grocery shopping Sunday afternoon in preparation for Monday's kick-off and decided to make a quiche. I bought crust, eggs, cheese, milk and flour. If I divide it into four pieces that's four meals that could only cost pennies, right?

Wrong. After putting pen to paper and dividing the cost of each item by how much was used in the quiche, and then again by four, it came out to about $1.60 a piece – more than my entire daily budget.

So, I did what any rational person would do. I eliminated the most costly ingredient (surprisingly, it was the cheese).

This was my result. A sunken egg bake in a now-shredded pastry crust.

It wasn't that it tasted that badly. It was how hungry I was just minutes after eating my lunch that threw me. My energy level dwindled throughout the work day. My productivity dropped and things didn't get done because all I could think about was my stomach.

I made dinner immediately when I got home from work – half a cup of rice with three baby potatoes. About an hour later, I knew I couldn't do it anymore.

I've had plenty of days that, for various reasons, I've eaten light. Even less than I had today. I was hungry, but I realized it wasn't about how I felt at that moment. It was knowing I had four more days to go. Four days where I wouldn't be able to think about anything except how hungry I was.

I have a job to do and a life to maintain at home after work hours. I have deadlines to meet, social media posts to write, an apartment to clean and a dog to exercise. So, I chose to fail. I dropped out of the Live Below The Line challenge.

But for a woman whose family is mired in poverty, failure is not an option – and there is no reprieve after four days. No snack waiting in the pantry for when she decides it's just too much.

And in comparison, the four days I was dreading would have been a breeze for these women. I don't have six children to feed because no one told me I was worth more than my reproductive cycle. I don't have to walk three miles every single day – burning up the few calories I can afford to intake – to the closest well because I don't have clean water in my faucet.

I don't have to hope that after my children are done eating, my husband will leave some for me because he has all the power in the relationship. Because I think that's ok. Because no one thought sending me to school would be a worthwhile investment.

But most importantly, I don't have to wonder if the rest of my life is going to be this way. I had an exit strategy. But so many of the women CARE works with have resolved themselves to a lifetime of poverty for themselves and their children. A life that can end at any moment because there is simply not enough to eat. For these families, failure isn't a humbling blog post and a hand in the cookie jar. It's either survive on $1.50 a day or don't live at all.

And frankly, after just one day, I don't know if I would have chosen the former. I am in awe of the strength and determination of the women who make the choice to survive every single day in the face of so much adversity.

Aside from demonstrating my low threshold for discomfort, my 12 hours of hunger has made me even more proud of the work CARE does. For so many people, CARE is the exit strategy. CARE provides the training to help women start businesses and earn an income – bringing in more money for food and building egalitarian relationships where husbands finally understand their wives are valuable as a partner, not a breeding machine.

CARE is teaching women about family planning.  We're showing them how and why they need to wait until they are ready to have children. And once they do, CARE is ensuring that they go to school – especially the girls.

You could say our goal at CARE is to not need a CARE at all. That one day we will have empowered so many women, children and families to lift themselves from poverty that poverty is gone altogether. We don't want people to depend on us for a lifetime of support. We want them to use us as a resource until they have the knowledge they need to change their lives for good.

Last year, CARE reached more than 277 million people with our poverty-fighting programs. Just think about that. 277 million people with hope. 277 million people who could one day see an end to their hunger.

With the little dignity I have left in the wake of my massive and abrupt failure, I will finish what I've been affectionately referring to as my "sad quiche" and the entire sack of baby potatoes. Wasting the food I bought to live below the line wouldn't just be defeating the purpose – it would be contradicting it.

In the mean time, I wish the best of luck to everyone else who is living below the line for CARE this week. And if you fail, I hope you remember it was a choice. A choice that 1.4 billion don't have.

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Wafaa Adnan Albaik, 32, a case manager at CARE's refugee center in Amman describes her work.

Wafaa Adnan Albaik, 32, a case manager at CARE’s refugee centre. Story available. © 2013 Deborah Underdown/CARE

I have been working at CARE's refugee center for three months. This is the sort of work I have always wanted to do. I've always been interested in humanitarian work, and it's very rewarding to help people in need.

We meet Syrian refugees, assess them, decide on the best way to help them. We might give them emergency cash so they don't get evicted from where they are living or help to pay for medicine and food. We also refer people to other organizations who might be able to help. At the end of the day, I call up cases to book appointments so I can follow up with people and see if we can help provide further assistance.

Working at the center is very satisfying. I listen to people and try my best to help them but, at times, my work is difficult and upsetting. In Mafraq, I met a family who is very poor – the mother had to sew clothes into a blanket to cover up her children at night. They had no food or water. Their home suffers from humidity and on rainy days, the water would flood the house. When leaving their house, the lady cried out, "Please don't forget us, please don't forget us!"

Refugees also tell me about life inside Syria. They talk of being surrounded all the time, no food, no water, hearing the constant bombing, the children living in constant fear; many of them have been attacked at their homes. People had to bury bodies at night, if they did so in daytime, they were at risk of being killed.

The hardest part of my job is managing expectations. How do I tell someone who comes to us that we can't help or that they need to go to another organization?  I feel very upset when I can't help someone. By listening and empathizing with refugees, I hope to be able to provide relief and support.

We need more funding so we can assist as many people in need as possible. Yesterday, 120 refugees came to our center – some days we have had as many as 400.

The center will run for as long as we have funding and the situation for refugees here in Jordan remains the same. We anticipate that this will be a prolonged crises with increasing needs but we currently only have enough money to keep the center going until August.

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Two weeks ago, Yawo Douvon, CARE's country director in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), found himself showing Angelina Jolie and U.K. foreign minister William Hague around the Lac Vert camp for displaced people near Goma, DRC, where they visited to meet with rape survivors. Today, as the G8 foreign ministers gather in London to sign a declaration on preventing sexual violence in conflict, Yawo calls on them to listen to the voices from Goma, support Hague's initiative and provide the means to make the initiative work.

Foreign Secretary William Hague and UNHCR Special Envoy Angelina Jolie visit Nzolo camp, March 2013. Picture Crown Copyright/MOD/LA(Phot) Iggy Roberts

GOMA, DRC (April 10, 2013) – Eastern DRC is known as the "rape capital of the world" and, as VIP visitors have come and gone over the years, it is easy to become cynical and wonder if warzone rape can ever truly be tackled given its prevalence and complex causes.

Some within the media were skeptical when the British Foreign Secretary and the Hollywood actress visited CARE's work in DRC, thinking perhaps it was more of a PR trip than anything. But, guiding them around the camp as part of William Hague's initiative for preventing sexual violence in conflict, I was struck by their sincerity and passion.

We introduced them to women like Marie and Josephine who recounted the horrific experiences they had suffered. We also showed them CARE's work helping survivors of sexual violence with their immediate needs for medical care, shelter, water and food, as well as the longer-term psychological support and financial assistance they need to move on with their lives.

William Hague was particularly interested in hearing about the situation of rape survivors in order to better understand how they can be supported in the aftermath of an attack and protected from future violence. He was moved by meeting unaccompanied children and asked what was being done to reunite them with their parents. Angelina Jolie was shocked by the level of atrocity experienced by the women she met, and wanted to know more about what could be done to help them. She was interested in how important cash transfers were to the women she spoke to and how they represent hope for them to be able to rebuild their lives.

As the G8 Foreign Ministers' meeting takes place in London tomorrow, I hope that William Hague will bring the voices of Marie, Josephine and the others like them who he met on his visit to DRC and Rwanda to the attention of his fellow foreign ministers. The task of tackling warzone rape may be colossal, but I applaud his efforts to seek an end to an atrocity that has brought so much misery and terror not only to so many ordinary Congolese people, but also to countless others the world over.

William Hague has declared a campaign to tackle impunity. By seeking to put in place an international protocol to increase prosecutions, he aims to send the message to perpetrators of warzone rape that their crimes will no longer go unpunished and rape will no longer be seen as an inevitable consequence of conflict. He has invested in a team of experts to gather evidence, investigate and prosecute such crimes. This is important first step on what will be a long and arduous journey.

It's encouraging to see a world leader – and a man – take a stance on this difficult issue and stake his reputation on it. I see in the villages in which CARE works in DRC how much more progress is made when not only women but also men challenge custom and practice, and take a stand against sexual violence.

I know of course that more is required to address the root causes of violence in Eastern DRC, which are complex and deep-seated. They involve competition for control of natural resources by various armed groups and deep grievances over power between different ethnic groups. Impunity for sexual violence crimes is rooted in wider lawlessness, which requires the wholesale reform of the national justice and security sectors.

An international protocol to tackle impunity together with deployments experts can help, but they cannot substitute for – and will not work without – long-term, difficult work to reform such institutions on the ground.

So, the diplomatic initiatives launched at the G8 will need to link to long-term aid programs, to address the unique and complex set of circumstances faced by the DRC and the different – but no doubt just as complex ­– sets of circumstances faced by every other state or region affected by conflict.

And, if they are to benefit from this work, the survivors themselves must see their immediate needs met – for lifesaving medical assistance, as well as longer-term health, counseling and livelihoods support to put their lives back together.

This is what I showed William Hague and Angelina Jolie during their visit to Lac Vert and it is this support that remains chronically underfunded.

What I hope now is that the G8 nations will review their funding to countries affected by conflict, and work with the UN and agencies like CARE to assess how to plug the gaps in frontline services for survivors. It should not be beyond our collective ability to ensure that whoever needs lifesaving assistance receives it. We have just lacked the resources and political will to make this happen, until now.

As I said earlier, I hope that the stories of Marie and Josephine are still vivid in William Hague's mind and that he will share these with his fellow foreign ministers. I ask the other G8 countries, on behalf of the many rape survivors we at CARE have assisted over the years in DRC and other war-torn states, to listen to the voices from Goma and act to end the heinous crime of warzone rape.

By launching his initiative to prevent sexual violence in conflict, William Hague has said "enough is enough." Now it is time for the other powerful governments of the G8 to join his call and provide the means to put it into action.

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Marie, 30, fled her home in Kitchanga when armed groups arrived and violence broke out in the Democratic Republic of Congo in March. Her long journey to safety – a week by foot, through fields and forest – was anything but safe.

Marie with her baby. She was raped fleeing to Lac Vert camp in DRC and currently does not know where her husband is. © CARE / Adel Sarkozi

One day, at dusk, not long before reaching the Lac Vert camp, the group of women she was with found themselves surrounded by armed men.

"As soon as we saw them, we knew what would happen," she says. "It is either die or accept your fate."

For women in DRC, "fate" often means rape

In the forest, at dusk, in front of their children, Marie and all the other women with her were raped.

Marie has a four-month-old baby. She doesn’t know where her husband is; they lost sight of each other when they fled. He doesn’t know what has happened to her, and Marie worries about how he is going to react once he does.

Somehow, after their ordeal, the women made it to Lac Vert camp. She arrived a week ago, and has been in pain and ashamed ever since.

"Everything hurts." She points to her abdomen, back, neck. She touches her head. "And here, too. I can’t sleep. What happened has been keeping me awake."

Support for rape survivors

Yesterday, Marie heard about the "house for mothers," a tent in the camp where women who have suffered sexual violence are offered support. Mustering up her courage, she came here to seek help. Now, she will receive emotional support and referral for medical care at the nearby health center.

Marie found out about the house from an educator trained by CARE. The job of educators is to let women in the camp know that such a place exists. They talk to survivors and encourage these women to reach out for help. They also speak to men to help foster a change in attitudes towards rape.

Marie says of the group with whom she traveled, "I will tell the other women to do the same, to come here. Many are ashamed and don’t want to admit to what has happened to them."

Rape with impunity

Marie says that the men who commit these horrific acts are never punished. "How can they be?" she asks. "They appear from nowhere, and disappear into nowhere. Who is going to find them?"

Her only hope is when the war stops, life will be better.

"Tell people to help us so that this stops, and we can go back to our homes," she says suddenly, a trembling plea in her voice.

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Yana*, 26, tends to her month-old baby as her two-year-old daughter sits on the floor playing with a bib – there are no toys to entertain her.

Yana's baby - born a refugee in Jordan. © 2013 Deborah Underdown/CARE

The young mother is on her own with her children, living and sleeping in the same small room. Her only possessions are in the corner of the room – a small bag of clothes, which is the only thing she could carry when she fled Syria five months ago.

"I came to Jordan with my husband five months ago. He went back 12 days ago to bring his mother over to live with us, but for the last three days I haven’t heard anything from him," she says. "I know the area he was in has had some big incidents in the last few days so I am very worried. My husband might not be able to return."

Yana doesn’t just have to deal with the stress of not knowing if her husband is dead or alive but has to struggle everyday just to find enough food for her children.

"I don’t have enough money. But my neighbors help me with food and water."

She continues, "The daily expenses are my biggest concern. I can’t afford milk or diapers. Some days I haven’t been able to afford milk for the baby. I don’t have any gas left to cook and I am too embarrassed to keep asking people for help. I make do with bread and eat it even when it is totally dry."

Yana’s baby was born a refugee and she says the arrival of her daughter made her "happy and sad at the same time."

"Three days before my baby was born, I was visited by someone from CARE. They gave me some money to help me cover the hospital expenses, "she explains. "It was very helpful. I didn’t even have any clothes for the baby at that time."

With her husband missing and no money Yana says, "I have no guarantees in life anymore. I just need the basics to survive – but I have no money left."

*name has been changed

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"If we knew this would happen to us we wouldn’t have brought so many children into the world." These are the words of Rima, a Syrian refugee living in Amman.

Photo of Ali and Rima's children, living in Jordan as refugees. ©Deborah UnderdownCARE/2013

Rima is sharing two rooms with her husband, her sister-in-law and their children – 12 people in total. The family fled Syria after Ali, Rima’s husband , was released from prison.

"It was as if he just disappeared, I had no idea where he was or what had happened to him. My son was only a month old when this happened so I went to stay with my family. When he was released we couldn’t risk staying and him being arrested again. Our house had been demolished and the shop burnt down. We were afraid he would be arrested again so we had to leave. We couldn’t handle the pressure," said Rima.

The children, who are 18 months to 10 years old, are suffering in their new surroundings.

"They are frustrated. They have a lot of pent up energy," she explains. "We can’t afford to send them to school – it’s far from here and the transport costs are too expensive for us. When we let them out to play people complain about the noise so they just sit inside all day. We have nothing to do."

Ali, previously the bread winner, is finding it hard to adjust to life now that he can’t provide for his family.

"I used to own two houses and I ran my own shop. It’s all been burned down and I can’t provide anything for my children. Everything I owned is gone."

"I can’t work because of the injuries I sustained when I was in prison. I was tortured and it’s very painful for me to walk," he explains. " I feel very bad about our current situation. We don’t have enough for everyone. Things are very expensive here, the rent is very high. CARE helped us to pay some of our rent because we owed the landlord money but we still can’t even afford to get the basics."

This family is living day by day and Rima says, "We want to go home. We don’t mind living in a tent if we are in Syria and it is safe."

For now it isn’t safe.  Rima’s family and thousands of others have to deal with the reality of a life as a refugee and the hardships that come with being refugees.

*names have been changed

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i'm BARUME BISIMWA ZIBA in R.D.Congo im looking for a job in CARE R.D.Congo tel contact  +243 97160319 +243 853195164 mail barume2008@yahoo.fr Uvira territory province of south-kivu contact Auriel S. eagleton for precision and recomandation . sarah.eagleton@gmail.com

Nov. 5, 2012

During her first trip to Africa, Venus Williams, right, and Dr. Greg Allgood of Procter & Gamble's Children's Safe Drinking Water Program, left, clean river water with P&G packets at a school in Kenya while visiting humanitarian organization CARE's programs. © 2012 Erin Lubin/CARE

It's the night before heading out to visit some of CARE's programs in Western Kenya, and I just met with some of CARE's staff to get an overview of what we'll see tomorrow. I'm trying to listen intently but my mind is racing with incessant questions and excitement.

I have reason to be excited. It's my first trip to Africa. As an African-American woman, I'm trying to process the significance of what it means to finally be on the continent. It's also the first time in my life that everywhere we go and on every street we walk down, the people all look kind of like me.

I'm eager to see CARE's poverty-fighting programs. For a long time I've wanted to use my position to help improve people's lives. Now, I'll get to see first-hand how CARE does exactly that. CARE's approach is to attack the root causes of poverty instead of just addressing the symptoms. Hearing CARE staff talking about it reminded me of when we were growing up and our dad would lead family sit-down meetings. He'd ask us questions like "Why is it that when you do something for someone it doesn't work as well as when you help them help themselves?"

Nov. 6, 2012

On the road to Hawinga, a small town in western Kenya near Lake Victoria and the border of Uganda, we passed the Equator! That was definitely worth a picture and we stopped to snap one.

The road was rougher than I anticipated. For much of the two-hour drive from the nearby provincial capital, Kisumu, there was no road at all – but a lot of mud. Instead of driving straight, our driver had to carefully swerve left and right across the road to avoid the huge, mud sinkholes.

Along the way we saw women and children walking, some carrying baskets on their heads. Cows grazed nearby. I noticed a group of children carrying long, green sticks. Some were swinging the sticks in a carefree gait; others were chewing the tops of the sticks. "Sugar cane," our driver told us; a popular snack.

Finally, we arrived at the Hawinga Health Facility. The clinic is a small white house with a wrap-around porch. Behind the house is a peaceful river out back. It's the community's water source.

At the clinic we heard from Greg Allgood, head of Procter & Gamble's Children's Safe Drinking Water program. Clean drinking water is critical to helping people in poor communities live healthier, more productive lives, he explained. Then a mind-blowing statistic: More than 2,000 children die every day from diarrhea caused by unsafe drinking water, more than HIV/AIDS and malaria combined.

CARE and P&G have teamed up to support local mothers and children with 53 clinics in the small towns like Hawinga that surround Kisumu. For nearly 5 years, they've been providing clean water to prevent waterborne illnesses. CARE and P&G provide the communities with P&G water purification packets that transform unsafe river, creek and well water into safe drinking water. And CARE provides comprehensive community education in hygiene and proper sanitation.

Beatrice Nafula, a health worker at the facility, demonstrated a hand-washing technique. Then we followed her to a bore hole, or a well - a quick three-minute walk- to fetch water. Nearby, I heard screaming babies. It was vaccination day at the clinic and the babies were clearly not enjoying their shots. Greg told us that clean water is an incentive for moms to go to the clinic so they can receive other critical services including immunizations or even giving birth.

We walked next door to Beatrice's house and watched her clean the water. I asked her what life was like before having access to clean water. While stirring the purification packets in a large plastic bucket of water, she told me how she contracted typhoid fever from drinking contaminated water. She got so ill that she slipped into a coma. She also told me about the time one of her kids got a nasty burn while boiling water to purify it. One of her neighbors, Janet Meda, told us her children got diarrhea two or three times a month before they had access to clean water. With the purification packets, the people have easy access to safe water. They're healthier and life is a little easier.

From the clinic we made the short drive to Goro Primary School, where students learn hand-washing techniques and how to purify water.

Wearing green school uniforms, the students welcomed us it with a song and dance. The lyrics to the song – in English - were fitting: "Bye Bye Cholera, Typhoid. Kids are now healthy and wise."

I joined them for a dance. I couldn't resist.

On the drive back, I kept thinking about Janet and Beatrice. Their experiences underscored the vital role of women as household stewards in rural communities. Given access to the proper resources, in this case access to clean water, they make sure everyone around them is taken care of.

I'm encouraged that something as simple as clean water can save and improve lives and that I was able to witness it.

I can't wait until tomorrow.

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Synthesis paper on CARE International in Pakistan’s perspectives on ‘Using Cash Transfers for improving Livelihoods in emergency responses’ Rationale & background of this paper: Flood 2010 was a quite unusual and thus historic calamity that Pakistan witnessed. The recovery efforts were still underway when abnormal rains flooded the southern parts of Pakistan again in 2011. Care international in Pakistan (CIP) setup a Flood emergency response team comprising sector specialists and field teams in three provinces of Pakistan to contribute to response efforts stimulated by both 2010 and 2011 flood emergencies. This paper showcases CIP’s work post 2010 to the extent of Cash transfer programming in emergency responses and also bundles lessens and best practices for use in future programming of similar nature. Scope & extent of 2010 flood emergency: Pakistan has never seen before, a catastrophe like the floods of 2010. Leaving 1,980 people dead and 2946 injured, the flood was a big blow to the livelihoods of about 4.5 million people who lost their jobs, mostly in the farming sector . The Khareef crop of 2010, which was ready for harvest, could not be harvested at the behest of sudden calamity and the people could not protect their stored grains and seeds from flowing away with the ruthless flood waters. People had to leave all their belongings at the mercy of fast moving waters and evacuate for saving their lives in emergency. Consequently twenty million people became internally displaced persons (IDPs) and seven million students were deprived of their academic session. The flood waters that started from northern and hilly areas of Pakistan gradually developed and after playing havoc with lower altitude areas, entered the southern parts of the country damaging 1,884,708 households and adversely affecting 20,251,550 people. Most of cropped areas are fed by the irrigation network emanating from the major rivers like Indus, Jhelum and Chenab whose watersheds were already overly precipitated. The areas in the lower planes like Punjab which is called the food basket of Pakistan, were also receiving rains that lasted for consecutive 6-7 days, therefore almost all the crops were washed away with the flood waters that were overflowing out of the streams. Resultantly 2.2 million hectares of crops were either destroyed or drowned. Livestock as usual, remained the low priority against the high priority of fleeing flood waters, and as a result 450,000 livestock heads were lost . Almost 50 percent of the total land area of Pakistan remained under stagnant water for pretty sometime and nearly 132, 000 square kilometers area was badly ravaged, which is about 23 percent of the total land area of the country. The scale of emergency was much beyond the national capacity of Pakistan and therefore the UN cluster system was set up and flash appeal amounting 1.9 billion USD was launched. The response gradually developed from scattered emergency assistance into a more coordinated and organized response led by many UN sectoral clusters. As the emergency phase was over, the cluster system also evolved into sectoral and thematic working groups under the UN. Many humanitarian organizations started working in a more coordinated and organized way. Most of the 2010 response plan was based on lessons learned from the humanitarian response to October -2005 earthquakes (South Asia Earthquake) and thus the contemporary response was better in terms of quality, although there were lesser quantity of resources available for this response which was much bigger in scale compared with the 2005 response. Except for the deaths and injuries, the 2010 floods in Pakistan was the biggest disaster compared with many mega-disasters that the world has recently witnessed like Tsunami-2004, South Asia Earthquake-2005, Katrina Cylone-2005, Nargis Cyclone-2008, and Haiti Earthquake-2010. Scope & extent of 2011 flood emergency: In August 2011, heavy monsoon rains triggered flooding in Balochistan and Sindh provinces, including some areas that were affected by the devastating floods of 2010. A joint UN-Government assessment found more than 5 million people with critical humanitarian needs following the 2011 floods. The UN and the Government jointly launched the 2011 Floods Rapid Response Plan in September and appealed for US$357 million for provision of immediate assistance to flood-affected people in Sindh and Balochistan for six months. Donors contributed $170 million in response to that appeal, thus enabling humanitarian agencies to provide various forms of humanitarian assistance to the affected population. The UN and the Government launched the Pakistan Floods 2011 Early Recovery Framework in February 2012 to cover longer-term early recovery needs in the flood-affected areas, seeking nearly $440 million to help communities to be more resilient to future disasters. How Care responded with Cash Programming: CIP advanced 9,935,382 USDs in cash grants to affected communities, either manually or mostly through Tameer Bank. Simultaneously with CIP, the Tameer Bank has been learning innovative and untraditional ways of benefitting communities through cash interventions. By dint of a continues learning process, not only Tameer Bank but other private sector players are now engaging with CIP on more innovative approaches for enhancing the access of benefitting communities to insurance coverage and mobile telephony based DRR education. Why was Cash a priority response? In line with CARE’s livelihood rights model and having confidence in the perception about cash’s ability to impact on all elements of the livelihoods framework, cash was prioritized as response intervention under the livelihood portfolio in 2010 and 2011 emergency responses. During 2010 and 2011 emergencies; affected populations had lost their sources of income, savings and assets. Since the food security and livelihood response by CARE didn’t happen in the immediate aftermath of emergencies, therefore the markets had stabilized a bit and thus cash was thought to be best offering. By the time the cash programs started markets had gained the strength to provide stocks for survival of survivors and to some extent for livelihood recovery also. Cash was thus used for boosting incomes and employment. Livelihood zoning was done in district of Muzaffargarh as part of CBHA (A DFID funded project) implemented in districts of Muzaffargarh and Rajanpur in Punjab and also in another PEFSA-II (ECHO funded project), which was implemented in district Qamber Shahdadkot of Sindh province. Women entrepreneurs were clustered per their corresponding skill sets and were advanced cash grants for resuming or starting businesses at household or small enterprise levels. Post distribution studies in South Punjab were commissioned with a purpose of analyzing the coping strategies used in terms of their impact on livelihoods, as well as the ability of livelihood groups to meet their immediate food needs. These PDMs revealed that cash was a vital support for affected communities, especially those who rely on credit. Like many other countries, people in rural Pakistan either take cash or food and agricultural inputs in commodities from local providers. Similarly in 2010 and 2011 rural folks had taken credit from local providers, but after disasters (2010 &2011 floods) they were unable to pay off debts because of loss of assets and income. Vicious Cycle of Indebtedness in Rural Pakistan-Adopted from FAO’s Livelihood Asset Trajectory Studies Traders, in turn, were not able to obtain and maintain supplies. In such circumstances, the provision of cash grants to affected households stimulated the movement of essential goods particularly the much needed food and agriculture inputs into affected areas. CARE also commissioned a research study on the issue of indebtedness. A copy of study report is placed below: Cash interventions also enabled the recipients to get goods and services directly from local providers, which stimulated the local economy and reduced the associated costs involved in otherwise moving goods and services from outside to the villages. In line with this finding cash proved to be more efficient than any other commodity support including food aid and benefitting communities attributed cash transfers as vitally important for economic recovery of the affected areas. Another interested finding from post distribution monitoring revealed that cash was mostly utilized for healthy and productive purposes. Most of beneficiaries used cash for accessing health and education services, buying food, machinery and livestock. Some people also used cash for trading (buying sellable goods at cheaper rates and selling with some margins). Negligibly small amount of cash was used on anti-social activities like re-marriages, payments to revenue and police officials, child labour and selling draught animals etc Care strongly believes that cash transfers can be an effective mean to livelihood recovery, expansion and diversification. Same hold true in South Punjab, where 73 percent cash grant recipients termed cash as vital source that impacted their livelihoods. Cash resulted not only in expanding livelihood assets but also triggering the increased consumption, production and processing. It promoted freeness and contributed to increasing the resilience of affected communities. Income generation formed part of the cash transfers, as in many cases, the use of the cash from grants or CFW was used to generate income, for example setting up of handicrafts business by rural women of district Muzaffagrh. As such, cash grants helped beneficiaries re-establish small scale business or to invest in livelihood assets, for example buying of agriculture inputs by recipients of conditional cash grants in Punjab, Sindh and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provinces. Cash induced income generation projects in Punjab also allowed people to diversify their income through small scale, self-employment business schemes, for example setting up of village based shops by the recipients of conditional cash grants in Punjab province under DFID funded CBHA project. The support in many instances stretched beyond merely providing cash, to supporting recipients in enhancing their management, supervisory and implementation skills, for example the team leaders of CFW teams had the opportunity to develop their management, communication and supervisory skills, while most of business grant beneficiaries received trainings aimed at ameliorating their management skills. Many agencies, academics and donors recognize that cash as an emergency intervention is appropriate when foods (or other goods) are available and markets are functioning and accessible. In addition to these two criteria, a third criterion is that cash can be delivered safely and effectively . In order to deliver cash safely and security CARE partnered with Tameer Micro Finance Bank. The partner bank has been transferring cash to beneficiaries within their villages through mobile service vans and the beneficiaries along with other stakeholders have termed this bank model as one that facilitates access to cash for affected populations in a dignified and honorable way. Such interventions, apart from serving purpose of the projects; have also strengthened the micro-finance sector alongside developing a new strategic partnership between the Development and Private sectors. Our experiences at CIP suggest that many other fears associated with cash transfers were also dispelled, for example; some people argue that women may not have control over the cash, or that cash distribution on a large scale would cause inflation. These kinds of fears have generally not been borne out by practice at CIP. During PDMs 78 percent decrease in sufferings of women and children as a consequence of cash transfer was reported. A rapid analysis of response options would also suggest that cash was best option in the 2010 and 2011 emergency responses. Normally the response options are: How would CIP like to respond with Cash in any future emergencies? CIP embarked upon some interesting research studies as part of the cash programming after 2010 flood emergency. Significant among these researches were: 1- ‘Women in Emergency’ 2- Case Study of Tameer Micro Finance Bank Partnership in Cash Transfer to the Flood 2010 Beneficiaries in Pakistan. 3- Case study on Targeting during 2010 emergency response. 4- Research study on the issue of indebtedness in Pakistan. Encouraged by our own capacities, informed by above mentioned researches and guided by the lessons that we have learnt and experiences that we have assimilated, CIP would like to expand her cash portfolio thus including more needs based programming like Cash for protection, Cash for Safety under the prevailing instruments of conditional or unconditional cash grants. Extremely vulnerable groups needing immediate support would continue to be preferably benefitted by unconditional modality. Appropriateness of responses and choices among modalities would however be guided by the broader body of knowledge around cash transfer programming. Since CIP has been mostly dealing with conditional and unconditional cash transfers and Cash for work modalities, we would prefer playing around these modalities, though we are experimenting Food vouchers at reasonable scale under PEFSA-III.