Self-Assessment Workshop on Cash and Voucher Assistance (CVA) was held with the support of the European Union (EU) and the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC)

On May 18-19, 2023, a Self-Assessment Workshop on Cash and Voucher Assistance (CVA) was held with the support of the European Union (EU) and the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC).

The purpose of the workshop is to review the progress in the first year of Plan of Action (PoA) of the preparedness and document all the achievements year to date, to review the CVA implementation and mainstreaming experience within the AzRCS to date and identify specific areas of strengths and weaknesses within key CVA preparedness domains and prioritize the second-year activities with a updated PoA.

Gafar Asgarzade, the vice-president of the AzRCS, greeted the participants of the seminar on behalf of Novruz Aslanov, the president of the AzRCS, the management, volunteers, and many members of the Society. In his opening speech, he especially emphasized the implementation of the activities of AzRCS CVA Preparedness is noteworthy success.

“When we look back over all these years, we see what difficult stages we went through. When we look at the statistics, we see numbers that can be considered successful. These figures are the result of an ongoing process. I think that the success of this program so far is a reason to continue it in the future.”

Sardar Gunel, Program and Operations Manager of IFRC in Azerbaijan, spoke about the importance and success of the project.

“We see the importance of this project from our market research. We see the satisfaction of both the people in need and the National Society in this project. Cash assistance is less risky, more transparent, and faster than other means of assistance. Within the framework of this project, we easily contacted the people in need in our target group and provided assistance to a large number of people. Taking into account the success of the project, we can further expand this knowledge and create a strong foothold in the National Society.”

Later, Hanifi Kinaci, CVA Representative of the IFRC, gave an overview of the standard CVA, and together with Nurana Gasimzada, CVA focal point in the NS, the first-year overview of preparations and achievements was discussed.

The seminar focused on the importance of renewing and building the experience of cash and voucher assistance (CVA) in the National Society as a preferred intervention modality in response to humanitarian emergencies, natural disasters, and crises, as well as pooling efforts and resources in the region to ensure the funding of National Societies in 2021 were discussed.

Then the participants of the event were divided into 5 groups where the discussions were held in 5 areas that are the Leadership Commitment; Processes, Systems and Tools; Finance, Human Resources and Capacities; Community Engagement & Accountability, Coordination and Partnership; and Testing, learning and improvement. Finally, the presentations of the groups were heard, and their evaluations were discussed.