Humanitarian Financial Assistance - How to Reduce Risk and Improve Value
James Shepherd-Barron
October 21, 2020
The benefits of humanitarian financial assistance – what the aid world calls ‘Cash & Voucher Assistance (CVA)’ – are pretty well known: Giving people cash instead of food or other forms of in-kind commodity empowers recipients to address their own priorities, reduces opportunities for corruption, and pumps money into local economies. It is, generally speaking, a much more dignified and cost-effective way of meeting beneficiary needs.
Read more...
Australian National Science Agency claims Virus can Survive for Weeks on Banknotes and then Plays Down Panic
Guillaume Lepecq and James Shepherd-Barron
October 14, 2020
Since the beginning of the pandemic, a steady flow of disinformation has distorted the role cash may play in spreading Covid-19. Now, Australia’s national science agency has published a controversial study suggesting that the virus could survive up to 28 days on banknotes in strict laboratory conditions. However, the study’s lead author, confusingly, is minimizing the infection risk presented in his own work.
Read more...