Cash transfers improve livelihoods for children and mothers in Aweil East

Young mother, Akiir Lual, is a recent recipient of a cash transfer pilot project in Aweil, Northern Bahr El Ghazal State in Northwestern South Sudan. As a breastfeeding mother, her two-year-old girl was suffering from malnutrition for almost a year and referred for treatment at a nearby Nutrition Site. When Akiir received her first cash transfer, she invested it into buying nutritious foods that provided a variety of foods for her daughter and five other children.

UNICEF, with generous funding from Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) and implemented by Action Against Hunger (ACF) is piloting the cash programme in 17 villages in Aweil aligned with existing nutrition programmes in the areas.

With the help of Community Nutrition Volunteers (CNVs), they screened children or mothers with malnutrition in nearby villages and registered them for the cash transfer project. In addition to receiving cash transfer, they also benefited from other services including antenatal care services, screening and treatment for malnutrition, nutrition counselling and immunization for their children. The cash transfer allowed each of the 1,626 pregnant and breastfeeding mothers to receive 261,500 South Sudanese Pounds (approx. US$246) in two payments over the six-month pilot.

This may not sound like a lot of money, but for women and children living in an area with extreme food insecurity and critical malnutrition severity, it is a lifeline.

After receiving the second cash transfer, Akiir improved her household food diversity to combat malnutrition. Before this pilot, Akiir relied on fetching and selling firewood to provide very basic and less diverse foods for herself and her children.