Caritas India is expanding its efforts to strengthen its humanitarian response by capacitating its staff on the Voucher Assistance program. The voucher Assistance program delivers greater choice, flexibility, and dignity to the affected in humanitarian crisis. This approach puts the community at the centre of its response and works towards localisation to improve the position of local organisations.

A 3-day training on Voucher Assistance Support under the Ready 2 Respond (R2R) program supported by CRS, was conducted from 31st August to 2nd September 2022 in Caritas India Head Office, New Delhi. The training was facilitated by Mr. Krishna Mohan Kallapali from CRS and attended by a total of 18 participants from Administration, Finance, Operations, Program, and MEAL of Caritas India Head Office and Regional Offices across India.

This training was planned as one of the preliminary activities under the implementation of the R2R program, which has an overall objective of strengthening Caritas India’s capacity to implement voucher-based responses. It was a first step toward orienting the staff on the various aspects of planning and implementing voucher-based response programs.

Fr. (Dr.) Jolly, Assistant Executive Director and Mr. Ghanshyam Jethwa, Head of Programs of Caritas India in their introductory message emphasized the importance of having in place proper SOPs and process documents for the implementation of emergency response programs so that the teams are always ready to respond, with the overall goal of reaching the most vulnerable and saving as many lives as possible.

A pre-test was conducted to understand the participants’ level of understanding of voucher-based responses prior to the training. The sessions clarified the basic concepts and fundamentals of vouchers and markets, and the rationale for using voucher-based response in emergency response programs. Participants gained a broad overview of the voucher-based response activities within the program cycle, the factors to be considered before deciding whether a voucher is the most feasible response option, and the concept of market-based programming and the ways to undertake simple market assessments through various theoretical sessions and group exercises.

The sessions on risk assessments in the context of voucher-based response programs focused on the importance of applying a protection lens and mainstreaming the same throughout the project cycle. This was followed by a session where participants were familiarized with “response analysis”, or the process of using the information to decide the best response plan to achieve positive results and minimize harm. The sessions ended with the participants getting an overview of the concepts and calculation of Minimum Expenditure Basket (MEB), gap analysis and transfer values in voucher-based response.

On the final day of the training, the learning of the participants was focused on the key considerations of implementing voucher-based response programmes that differ from in-kind approaches, and the aspects of MEAL within voucher-based response programs. In conclusion, the next steps for taking the learnings from the training to be integrated into future voucher-based response programs of Caritas India were discussed by Fr. Sushil, Administrator, and Mr. Ghanshyam Jethwa, Head of Programs, Caritas India. The day’s proceedings ended with a post-test, vote of thanks and collection of qualitative feedback from the participants on the 3-day program.