Sail Through the Storms with Cash Transfer: Survivor’s Stories of Cash and Vouchers Assistance in Indonesia During Disasters and Covid-19

By Jonatan Lassa, John Talan, Hestin Klaas and Supia Yuliana

World Humanitarian Summit in 2016 call for humanitarian industries including the United Nations and NGOs to bolder promote the use of cash transfers in responding to disasters.

This book documents experiences and collects personal accounts on disasters,
COVID-19 and cash transfers from disaster survivors in Indonesia whose lives intersect with other survivors and humanitarian responders, ranging from local activists to NGOs’ workers. The survivors are often labelled as ‘project beneficiaries’. Cash assistance and disaster payments are temporary income for the affected community. It is no silver bullets despite their rich potential to reduce vulnerability and suffering. One of the promises of such assistance is that it can help both women and children survive and rebuild their lives after a crisis, be it from a natural catastrophe or man-made hazards. The question is how such assistance is understood in a fuller context of a survivor’s complex life?

To its critics, humanitarian cash assistance is like ‘a drop of salt in the ocean’ in that
it is not enough to make a difference to disaster-affected people’s lives.


Nevertheless, the question is how a relatively small-size and temporarily distributed cash assistance within a short time window can significantly impact the beneficiaries’ life at a particular time and places ruined by disasters? Survivors and beneficiaries are not just numbers. They are humans with stories worth listening to. This book shows that to what extent cash assistance can be of meaningful, they must be understood in a fuller context of people’s lives, stories, including their wade dreams that go beyond the cold and dry quantitative evaluation measures that are often chasing the numbers with a certain percentage of Yes and No in agreeing or disagreeing about how good and helpful support is to the life of the crisis-affected people.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris AU
• Release date: Nov 22, 2022
• ISBN: 9781669832928

Jonatan Lassa

Jonatan Lassa is a senior lecturer in humanitarian, emergency and disaster management at Charles Darwin University. He has been advising billteral donors, UNs/INGOs/NGOs on disaster and crisis management policy. In the last 15 years he has been a researcher at world top universities, including United Nations University, Harvard University and Nanyang Technological University. John Talan is a researcher based at the Institute of Resource Governance and Social Change as well as Resilience Development Initiatives in Indonesia. He recently served as a fellow at the Global Center of Spatial Methods for Urban Sustainability in Berlin. Hestin Klaas is a Cash and Voucher Team leader at Wahana Visi Indonesia. She graduated from the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex, UK Supia Yuliana is a researcher based at the Institute of Resource Governance and Social Change and Gadjah Mada University, Indonesia

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SAIL THROUGH THE STORMS

WITH CASH TRANSFER

Survivor’s Stories of Cash and

Vouchers Assistance in Indonesia

During Disasters and Covid-19

Jonatan Lassa

with

John Talan, Hestin Klaas, Supia Yuliana

Copyright © 2022 by Jonatan Lassa.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted

in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,

recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system,

without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and

such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 11/16/2022

Xlibris

AU TFN: 1 800 844 927 (Toll Free inside Australia)

AU Local: [phone] ([phone] from outside Australia)

www.Xlibris.com.au

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CONTENTS

Abbreviations

Foreword From Wahana Visi Indonesia

1Introduction

1.1 The Stories

1.2 The Vision of the Book

1.3 Methods of Data Collection

1.4 How to Read This Book

Part 1Humanitarian Cash Transfers as Protection Agenda

2What Humanitarian Cash Transfers Can Do

2.1 Avoiding Babylonian Confusion: Definitions

2.2 A Libertarian Paternalism Project

2.3 Humanitarian and Disaster Cash Transfer Programme

2.4 Wahana Visi’s Commitment to Cash Voucher Programming

2.5 Covid-19 Exacerbates Quality of Recovery in Disaster Displaced Communities

2.2 First-Time Banking and Linkages with Government Cash Transfer

2.3 Cash Transfer Increases Mental Bandwidth of the Survivors and Boosts Hope

2.4 Impact of CVP on Child Nutrition Is Consistent

3Context of Cash transfer in Indonesia: From disasters to Covid-19

3.1 Policy Context of Humanitarian Cash Transfer in Indonesia

3.2 Adoption of Cash Transfer by Government during Covid-19

3.3 Cash Assistance Process Flow in WVI Context

3.4 Use of Technology in Implementation of CVP

3.5 Governance Dimension of Cash Transfer Programming

3.6 Complex Institutional Arrangements

4Cash Transfer’s Multiplayer Effects: Insights from Lombok

4.1 Impact of 2018 Earthquakes

4.2 Cash for Work for Irrigation Recovery in North Lombok

4.3 Women’s Participation in CfW for Livelihood Improvements and Empowerments

4.4 Cash Transfers as Empowerment Tools for Mothers and Children

4.5 Psychological Support for Children and Mothers

4.6 Putting Children First

4.7 Cash for Work Boost Collective Sense of Community Spirit

4.8 Cultivating Trust from Village Governments

4.9 Response That Inspires Local Leaders

4.10 Can CVP Nudge Local Market Economy Recovery?

4.11 Decision-Making: Exclusion and Inclusion of Beneficiaries

4.12 Fintech and Cash Transfers

4.13 Cash Transfer as Circular Economy?

5Cash as Empowerment Tools for Mothers and Children: Insights from Central Sulawesi

5.1 Impact of Earthquakes, Tsunamis, and Liquefaction in Palu

5.2 Wahana Visi’s Cash and Voucher Programme in Central Sulawesi

5.3 Cash for Child Nutrition and Health: Bantu Nutrisi Programme

5.4 Cash for Education Spending

5.5 Roles of NGOs as Connectors: Restoring Citizen-State Relations

5.6 Private Sector Engagements: Exposure to Banking

5.7 Exposure to Insurance

Part 2Stories from the Field

6Beneficiaries Stories

1. Lombok Story: Padmawati, forty-two years old, Village Sembalun Bumbung

2. Lombok Story: Baiq Lies Imbarsari (Sokong Village, North Lombok Regency)

3. Lombok Story: Mirnayanti—Sajang Village, East Lombok

4. Lombok Story: Deny Roy (Leader of Majalgu Hamlet, Village of Sokong)

5. Lombok Story: Diah Kusumawati (Sajang Village) Suffering That Never Ceases

6. Lombok Story: Liana Eti Tantri—Sokong Village, KLU

7. Lombok Story: Luswatul Aeni—Sembalun Bumbung

8. Lombok Story: Maryam Sokong Village-KLU

9. Central Sulawesi Story: Eka Widya Astuti, Nutrition Assistance, Lolu, Sigi

10. Central Sulawesi Story: Lutfin from Marana Village

11. Central Sulawesi Story: Muhammad Dong—Fisherman from Marana

12. Central Sulawesi Story: Monifa and Abdul Jalil—Fisherfolk from Marana

13. Central Sulawesi Story: Yamini, Posyandu Cadre and Cash for Work Beneficiary

14. Central Sulawesi: Story Nurdin—Fisherman in Marana

15. Central Sulawesi Story: Sapri—Fisherman of Marana Village

16. Central Sulawesi Story: Yeni and Jois Tipo Village

17. Central Sulawesi Story: Niar—Beneficiary of Small Micro Enterprise

18. Central Sulawesi Story: Ervina—Beneficiary of Small Micro Enterprise

7Vendors’ Stories

19. Central Sulawesi Story: Cash for Catching Fishes: Jayadin, Bantu Nelayan

20. Lombok Story: Mustiama, Sembalun

21. Lombok Story: Akmal—Vendor, CVP, Sembalun

22. Lombok Story: Sa’yun—Vendor in Sembalun Bumbung

8Stories from the Field Staff

23. Central Sulawesi: Decision-Making: Voucher or Cash? Views from Noldi

24. Central Sulawesi: Views from the Frontline: Novie from Palu

25. Lombok Story: Nurhayati

References

Acknowledgement And Gratitude

About The Authors

ABBREVIATIONS

FOREWORD FROM WAHANA

VISI INDONESIA

Wahana Visi Indonesia (WVI) - as often shorten as Wahana Visi in this book - in a global partnership with World Vision International, is committed to responding to the most vulnerable children in their time of need. As a Christian humanitarian organization dedicated to working with children, their families and communities, WVI has been working in Indonesia since 1960 and strives to contribute to improving the well-being and rights of the most vulnerable girls and boys by reducing the root causes of their vulnerabilities. Adopting humanitarian ecosystem framework in disaster response, WVI works closely with government from the national to village level and empowers local partners to ensure program sustainability through 4 sectoral priorities: health and nutrition, education, child protection, and economic development, with three approaches: transformational development, advocacy, and emergency response. WVI currently has 31 area programs in 65 regencies across 15 provinces of Indonesia.

Our global partnership takes action to respond to crises and ensures people facing disasters are provided with essential, life-saving assistance that is context-appropriate, dignified, and efficient. Across the humanitarian sector, there is a growing recognition of the effectiveness of Cash and Voucher Programming (CVP) as a powerful approach to responding to people’s needs in emergencies. Certainly, this is an approach WVI endorses. We have turned our focus from direct commodity distribution to a more empowering and effective modality in the form of CVP. The shift occurred significantly following the World Humanitarian Summit in Istanbul in 2016. Going further, WVI is committed to delivering 50% of its humanitarian assistance to disaster and crisis-affected children through cash and voucher programming by 2022. WVI also strives to create a pathway to longer-term government-led social protection assistance and strengthen the humanitarian-development nexus and overall resilience and social cohesion. The whole process should also be underpinned by humanitarian accountability and social accountability.

Through its extensive experiences in humanitarian assistance, WVI has successfully managed resources from various donors, such as Aktion Deutschland Hilft (ADH), UNICEF, The Office of U.S Foreign Disaster Assistance (OFDA), DFAT Australia, New Zealand Disaster Response Partnership, Dutch Cooperating Aid Agency (SHO), Dutch Relief Alliance (DRA), Hongkong SAR, Disasters Emergency Committee UK (DEC), Taiwan ICDF, and other donors to deliver social protection programs since 2016 with a total CVP funding around USD5,000,000 that reached more than 395,128 people including 38,440 girls and 77.940 boys.

Our teams on the ground have witnessed children’s lives improve as a result of cash and voucher programming. Families have been able to purchase quality food, keep their children in school, afford medicine, purchase seeds and livestock and create small investments to secure their future better and reduce their vulnerability in the face of disaster. We are also aware that people’s dignity has been restored through the utilization of cash and voucher programming. Empowered with cash assistance, a family can choose which needs they prioritize and play lead roles in their own recovery. This book highlights the ways people have been supported through the program. Finally, we hope that the lessons learned from Central Sulawesi, Lombok, and other areas will be a good resource for humanitarian practitioners, private sectors, as well as governments who will respond to future emergencies.

Angelina Theodora, National Director of Wahana Visi Indonesia

1

Introduction

1.1 The Stories

In disaster and humanitarian crisis settings, if designed deliberatively, cash transfer programmes can buy out some freedoms for the survivors. Governments can help by scaling up and targeting broader coverage. Despite being smaller in scale, NGOs’ cash transfer programmes often come in a package that involves participation and empowerment.

This book presents twenty-five lived stories and experiences from disaster survivors in Central Sulawesi and Lombok Island who have been affected by devastating earthquakes in 2018 and further exacerbated by Covid-19. The survivors include beneficiaries, local businesses, and local NGO staff. Each story provided in part 2 can be seen as a standalone story—where each story represents the everyday life of surviving disasters and Covid-19.

The stories are narrated by empowered survivors. The narrators include the beneficiaries, the local vendors, and the field staff of the humanitarian cash transfer programme from Wahana Visi Indonesia, one of the largest humanitarian organisations in Indonesia. Below are two snippets of stories from disaster survivors.

These stories are not directly linked to the technical process of cash and voucher distribution after disasters. NGOs, governments, and academics alike often ignore these stories. We would like to present the survivors’ experiences in their everyday context, which might be boring for some.

****

Eka Widya Astuti (39) is a posyandu (community-based integrated healthcare) cadre and a mother of three children (see story 9). She lives in Lolu village. She was attending a Friday evening Qur’an recitation and reading in Jono Oge, a neighbouring village within walking distance, on 28 September 2018. She was expecting her youngest child. She said, ‘When the recitation was in progress, the ground split open, and we fled away to save our lives.’

They survived that evening. But the rest of the story was already in the news as most of the Jono Oge Village was plunged into the earth. Eka also lost her house because of the earthquake that evening. Together with her two kids, they ran, jumped, ran and jumped again to escape from the trembling soil because of the liquefaction triggered by the earthquake. She jumped and ran as if she were not expecting a child. As they ran, the ground at their back roared and split as the world rumbled, and the soil lost its strength and swallowed up everything in their back.

She gave birth to her youngest child, Gibran, two months later. She described the situation during the delivery of the child as like living in a hut. Gibran is now a three-year-old boy. He cannot pronounce words fluently as he should for a child of his age.

Eka credited the running away from the fateful evening that caused Gibran’s speaking disability. In her opinion, the foetus was shocked when she ran away. She also believes that the shocks in the evening and the anxiety and stress that followed after the evening had caused an impact on the developmental progress of Gibran. ‘We didn’t have anything in the first few weeks, including electricity. It was slightly longer before they received much assistance, making my child (Gibran) malnourished and stunted,’ Eka claimed.

Eka was later selected to participate as a beneficiary in a programme—namely, Bantu Nutrisi (Nutrition Cash and Voucher Assistance)—that aimed to improve the nutrition of children under the age of five who suffer from stunting in the village. To implement the programme, WVI (or sometimes interchangeably called as Wahana Visi in this book) collaborated with posyandu cadres in the village. Mothers with children under the age of five years old were asked to go to the posyandu, where WVI nutrition staff measured the children (e.g., weight and the so-called mid-upper arm circumference, a.k.a. MUAC). Each child’s progress was monitored and followed up by the staff and posyandu cadre.

The selected mothers of the children under five were asked to buy nutritious foods to boost the weight of their stunted children for ten days, and after ten days, the weight of the children was measured again. Any underweight children were asked to return to the posyandu for further registration.

After the first ten-day trial, the development progress of the children remained under surveillance for another two weeks, within which each child was still given additional nutrition. Eka’s son gained only a little weight after the first week, so she continued to receive help for another week.

The mothers were trained to cook alternative nutritious foods using local food materials. In addition, the Bantu Nutrisi programme transferred cash to the mothers’ accounts. During the intervention, each family received the transfers in four instalments: IDR 2.1 million, IDR 2.1 million, IDR 450K, and IDR 450K. Each family continued to receive cash until their underweight child got more weight set by Bantu Nutrisi staff.

For Eka, Bantu Nutrition’s cash transfers have been very helpful. She can use diverse food materials she bought from the local market, and the ingredients purchased from the market are fresher because they are handpicked by themselves. She said she could make her own choices based on the healthy and nutritious menu adjusted to the local context. With cash, she could save money to spend the next day.

Eka highly praised the cash transfer programme because it was in line with what she, like a toddler’s parents, wanted. She used the money to buy meat vegetables for the whole family, but she focused more on the needs of Gibran, her son.

As an integral part of emergency response, Wahana Visi provided psychosocial support (often misunderstood by the beneficiaries as trauma healing) to the children in every intervention area. However, Eka maintained that ‘the activities of the WVI programme in the post-earthquake atmosphere was also a kind of trauma healing for me’. She likes how the programme provided the children with ‘trauma-healing activities’, and the parents received the effects of the intervention. After the earthquake, almost all households in the area suffered losses because of the collapse of their houses and damage to their household items. She added, ‘Everything we owned had been buried in the mud. Everything turns to zero. When we were still in the displacement camp, we received the family kit, including kitchen sets from WVI.’

Eka testifies that the cash transfer programme was perfect for her because it suits her child’s needs. It does not cover all the needs of their children, but Bantu Project was vital for Gibran as it paid attention to various aspects of the disaster survivors. She admitted that WVI provided some of their needs, especially water and a place to live at that time. WVI also helped build the MCK (bathing, washing, and toilet facility) for families who did not have one. (See Diah’s more complete story in part 2, story 9.)

****

Diah Kusumawati (40) is a housewife in Sajang Village, nearby Mount Rinjani, East of Lombok, West Nusa Tenggara, Indonesia (see story 5, chapter 2). A few years ago, before the devastating earthquakes in July and August 2018, Diah pictured the future in her mind as she said, ‘I always dream of being a successful businesswoman when turning 40 years old.’

Diah recalled the good life that she and her family and most villagers had in Sajang. ‘Life was quite good because tourism services were much alive around Mount Rinjani. The business activities of hiking, climbing and trekking guides were highly demanded. The villagers worked as porters and tourist guides and trekking assistants, food sellers, shelter service providers and other related climbing services.’ Diah and Jaunadi (the husband, 43) had side businesses such as a small kiosk, catering, and snacks. Diversified livelihoods and stable income boosted their collective efficacy to plan for a better life.

Unfortunately, instead of fulfilling her dream, she and her family must first survive the never-ending crises that lasted for four years. First, the disastrous experience resulting from the series of devastating earthquakes that shattered her village and the entire Lombok Island in 2018. The crisis further escalated and hence affected their business supply chain. Second, as they rebuilt their lives and livelihoods, Covid-19 restrictions and chaos emerged as a potential destroyer of her dream. In her own words, she pitied that suddenly her world is turning upside down as one crisis leads to the other and then the other.

The earthquake in 2018 caused not only damages to their house. It also caused trauma and fear that lingers in her family. They slept in a tent (displacement camp) for three months. They felt disempowered by the experience as they stopped visiting their paddy field, where they grew onions and garlic. She added, ‘There are no buyers, which means we have to suffer losses. In the process of recovering from the 2018 earthquakes, the Covid-19 pandemic took place and made us experience deeper losses and more difficult to recover.’

Before the earthquakes in 2018, Diah combined farming and off-farm activities. The earthquakes devastated their supply chain as demands of their crops slumped because of disruptions of the tourism sector in the city. Such a shock in demand is reflected in the price of garlic that fell from Rp 1.0M–1.2M down to Rp 0.5M per 100kg; red onion’s price fell from Rp 1.3M to Rp 0.8M per 100 kg.

Covid-19 added more burden to their shoulders as it compromised the local government’s capacity to control the price by absorbing and regulating the market of certain crops. For example, before Covid-19, the local government procured most onion harvests. Diah and the husband assumed that the local government shifted their priority to the Covid-19 response. Furthermore, the fertiliser shop counter also reduced significantly overall (no information about the number of shops). They could not get the amount they often ordered before Covid-19.

Their experiences paint a more gloomy picture of food security amidst a prolonged Covid-19 crisis that can compromise access to food, including a potential crisis in food production.

Diah and Jaunadi were happy with the cash and voucher assistance (CVP) from Wahana Visi Indonesia—not because they are significant relative to their pre-2018 business scales; it is relatively small and episodic. Nevertheless, in their words, the CVP tastes like a drop of water for a thirsty man/woman in a desert—and yet it gives such relief. It could, in a way, offload their mental burden originated from the uncertainty and complexity of the interplay between earthquakes and Covid-19 risk at one hand and the institutional gaps at the other hand. (See Diah’s more complete story in part 2, story 5.)

****

Vendors’ stories are not just about finance and delivery. With an improved quality of small boats, the fishers can fish further. For example, stories from Jayadin open up our eyes to the multiplayer effects of humanitarian cash transfers.

Jayadin (story 19) is a fisherman and a boat craftsman in Kavaya Village, Sindue District, Donggala Regency. He lost his house because of the earthquakes and his boat during the tsunami in 2018. He recalled that ‘within a week, none of the fisherfolk went to sea. I just tried to sell leftover fish, but there were no buyers. No one wanted to eat fish because there were many corpses in the sea. A few weeks after the tsunami, there was no work, no activity’.

He has been working as a boat maker for twenty years. His income was often only enough for daily needs, and it was impossible to save. Now, because of the forty-eight boat orders from the Bantu Nelayan (cash and voucher assistance for fishermen) project under the Central Sulawesi Earthquake and Tsunami Response (CENTRE) umbrella programme, he has been able, for the first time, to save money in the bank and rejuvenate his old boat with a new machine capable of sailing farther. He is happy with the condition of his new boat and an engine that is bigger than the average boat engine in the area. Now, he can be more quickly catching up to the top race position during the anchovy season, which is the most significant source of income for fishers in their area. For him, having a new machine, the income becomes better because he can be the fastest fisher to arrive at the location of the anchovy spawn. Local fishers will be the last to arrive with small engines and may not find an excellent location to catch anchovies.

Many fishers in Marana Village relied on rowboats to only fish. Under climate change and more extreme weather, smaller fishers with rowboats could not fish far from home. Many local fishers were turned to anglers because of poor boats. WVI’s boat assistance to fishers in Marana also provides opportunities for these fisherfolk to hunt for anchovies and can’t go hunting for anchovies. WVI helps improve their ability to compete in the sea to ‘compete with other (richer) Fisherfolk’.

Besides financial management skills and job benefits for his family and those around him, the collaboration with WVI also opened a new perspective for Jayadin. Before the tsunamis, he was a stubborn boat maker that paid attention to his perspective when crafting a boat.

He now knows more about customer participation in boat work. This new understanding opens up new market opportunities for him. As a boat craftsman, he understands that the boat’s model does not have to be uniform. He needs to make a more diverse boat model because, with Bantu Nelayan, he has studied and experienced intensely that each customer has different needs and aspirations. Combined with previous experience, every customer always has their own desires when asking him to work on their boats.

Thus, the ability and technique of making