Turkiye/Syria

After a series of devastating earthquakes and aftershocks that have struck 11 provinces in southern Turkiye and parts of North-West Syria (NWS) since February 6th, 2023, the Collaborative Cash Delivery Network deployed a Collaboration Manager with the support of CashCap.

In addition to resulting in tens of thousands of fatalities, the disaster also left hundreds of thousands of households, including vulnerable groups such as children and the elderly, without access to basic needs such as shelter, food, water, medical care, and heat during harsh winter conditions. The situation required urgent and coordinated action from the international community to provide humanitarian aid and support to those affected by the disaster.

Objectives

CCD’s experience in supporting its member agencies during the initial phase of the emergency in Ukraine and Poland in 2022 generated compelling evidence that much could be achieved through facilitated collaboration and shared technical services, and opportunities could be identified for CCD members to innovate and transform CVA aid delivery collectively.

CCD’s strategic intent in Türkiye/Syria earthquake response included:

Support and complement member agencies’ responses through brokering and facilitating collaborations within civil society and improving operational coordination among members

Test new and non-mainstreamed approaches, implement pilots to generate evidence, learning, and scalable and adaptable models for a more accountable and effective cash response

Scoping Mission

CCD’s Collaboration Manager has established a Communities of Practice (COP). COPs carried out scoping missions for each context to consider CCD’s offer to members during the relief phase, explore sustainable exit strategies for humanitarian action, and build on existing projects.

Specific objectives:

Map response gaps, challenges, and opportunities
Understand agency goals and priorities
Determine CCD’s offer on response and potential exit strategies

Results

Turkiye

Find an entry point to support the existing coordination system with technical aspects (e.g., data interoperability, transfer values harmonisation, etc.) without duplicating their efforts, nor creating a parallel system. Preliminary discussion with their Chairs and Co-Chairs suggested to investigate how to support them by providing technical guidance based on CCD’s pillars and its CoP members’ areas of expertise.
Follow-up on the reported advocacy-related needs at Cash Based Interventions Technical Working Group (CBI-TWG) level. To date, these were identified as:

The need for a compendium of information regarding the CVA bureaucracy and its legal framework,
Clear evidence-based guidance on MPCA and sectoral CVA, targeting criteria, deduplication, and inclusion/overcoming barriers pre-identified, and
Understanding of the informal cash distributions in the community by private donors. These are not regulated, and there were reported perceptions and unfairness because they occur just where these people can access.

Continue unpacking identified gaps with regular thematic meetings, and developing learning documents, where needed.
Promote locally-led response and inclusivity by opening some of the thematic discussions and capacity building exercises organised to national actors and implementing partners.
Enhance collaborative efforts amongst CCD partners operating in Türkiye via continuous engagement and follow-ups.

Syria

Syria has 3 response modalities - Crossline, Cross-border from Gaziantep, and Cross-border/Direct from Northeast Syria (NES). CCD can help address gaps for organisations in complicated contexts, like Northwest Syria (NWS) with 8 coordination bodies for cash-based interventions.

CCD's Coordination Manager has successfully brought together the WoS, NWS CWG, FSL, and ERL coordination bodies to address a critical gap that is affecting organisations' ability to use the modality in a technically sound manner.

Enhance collaborative efforts amongst CCD partners operating in Türkiye via continuous engagement and follow-ups.

Data Interoperability: Improved data sharing protocols and coordination of data collection are needed to address concerns over de-duplication and data interoperability. CCD is discussing with GOAL to establish a de-duplication mechanism and employ its Data Interoperability model to strengthen programming through referrals.

Localisation: Local actors in Syria have been providing assistance to affected communities for over a decade. However, they typically deliver aid as sub-contractors under implementation-focused relationships with INGOs and UN agencies without comprehensive capacity strengthening. Only 2% of funding globally goes directly to local actors, and CCD can use its Global Cash ToT and Institutional Capacity building approaches to increase the number of local NGOs who are able to access direct funding.