Thank you all for braving the weather to make it here today. We hope to have a very interesting conversation My name is Scarlett Aldebaught-Green. I'm a senior policy analyst in our asset building program Work on a global development project called YouthSafe As you can see I'm losing sort of getting back my voice So actually I'll let these folks talk a lot more So I'll be moderating today's event and then I'll introduce everyone and we'll get started So in the far end we have Kate McGowan. She's the digital finance lead and senior policy advisor for USAID Administrator at USAID She has helped conceptualize and implement the agency's approach to accelerating the growth of inclusive electronic and related digital financial services Radha Reshkotia is the senior director for economic programs at IRC the International Rescue Committee In this role she sets the vision for IRC's global strategy for economic programming and Supervises a team of technical experts who support IRC's global economic programming She'll be talking today about a publication and on some more Issues as well called emerging emergency economies the impact of cash assistance in Lebanon Which I hope you all have the opportunity to pick up outside if not I think we still have some copies And there's a link to it which you obviously can't click but you can see the URL on your bio sheet Sarah Bailey is an independent consultant and a research associate at the Overseas Development Institute in London Where she was a full-time researcher for the humanitarian policy group for five years and Michael Fay is the co-founder and CEO of Segovia technology as well as the co-founder and executive chairman of give directly in these various roles Michael has focused And focuses on building an operational model and its associated technology For implementing cash transfer programs as effectively as possible. So okay, we'll start us off Well, thank you very much. It's a real pleasure to be here, and I know the weather is terrible So I'm glad that there are brave souls that we're willing to come out And I do run the digital finance team at USAID which is part of USAID's newly launched global development lab Which is really helping Equip the rest of the agency to better incorporate science technology innovative business model and partnerships to try to accelerate development outcomes across The agency's portfolio You know USAID is the largest bilateral donor in the world and the vast majority of our budget actually goes into agriculture and health programs Quite a bit as well goes into humanitarian response and one of the one of the opportunities That's really fraught with lots of challenges as you'll hear about today is how to take what we see now as these this emerging Economic infrastructure that's been made possible really most fundamentally by the by the spread of mobile technology coupled with new approaches to Using agents to get banking services outside of brick-and-mortar physical branches and the rise of sort of financial inclusion as as important global development Imperatives and so what we're trying to figure out right now at USAID is how can we Use the programming and the relationships that we have With governments and partners overseas for general development purposes How can we use that to help accelerate the growth of? These digital transaction platforms, which you know are commonly known as mobile money But also have you know much greater capability than just basic money transfer services over mobile phones We're now seeing You know mobile wallets where basic transaction accounts for people can store money As well as send and receive money pay bills But then there's a whole host of products that once people are included in the financial system in this very basic way that they become They become sort of prime consumers up or potential consumers of and the really important risk mitigation tools Such as access to credit insurance savings products So what we're really wrestling with is how can we marry these two agendas of using The money that we spend on trying to deliver assistance Through either agriculture programs or health programs or in this case what we're talking about today is humanitarian programs How can we not only improve the delivery of those of that assistance by making it? faster More efficient and in the case of cash as it's starting to more increasingly replace commodities as as what we give to people more effective and more You know more impactful in terms of the local economy How can we use? Those programs and think about pushing them through channels that actually help build lasting economic infrastructure in these countries and there are a lot of Issues associated with that, but I think the opportunity both to really accelerate financial inclusion But also improve the transparency and effectiveness of aid delivery And then I think finally and most importantly the opportunity to help build this market Infrastructure that can really redefine Broad-based economic growth and in poor countries I think is so compelling that it's exciting to have the opportunity to speak with everyone here today and figure out together How we're going to take some of those those challenges on Great all right. Well good afternoon everyone. It's great great to be here I'm here really to talk about two things. So one is to share with you some of the findings from the Research that we conducted on the Lebanon winter cash assistance program last year but then secondly to build off that and address some of the issues that Kay has raised in terms of How we use that evidence and the experience that it that it also carmated in from the field And and take that into into new directions going forward So just in terms of the research then I'll give you a quick overview and hopefully you'll have a chance to look at the report in more detail so this was a Piece of research that was conducted on the winter cash assistance program that UNHCR was implementing through implementing partners and operational partners on the ground in Lebanon between between December and March 2013 to 14 The program was targeting 90,000 households. So it was a relatively sizable program And what we thought would be a really interesting thing to do would be to really try and evaluate what the impact of that program is Both on the households, but then also looking more broadly at the market and the economy within within which the Syrian refugees living The it was also it was also an interesting piece of research because it was not a program that IRC was Implementing we are an implementing agency. That's our main bread and butter work but for us this this really came as an opportunity to Conduct a rigorous evaluation and contribute to an existing evidence base But really build that out with a focus on refugee assistance and and the role of cash within that So we jumped at the chance and we're able to work with our research partners professor Christian Lehman and Daniel Masterson from the universities of Brazil and Yale respectively to design a research Methodology that was based off the program design itself. So Lucky for us. We were able to find that, you know, the program is implemented based off Demographic and geographic criteria. So it was people's vulnerability criteria, but then also coupled with The altitude at which they were living so households that were living above 500 meters in particularly cold areas We're provided cash assistance. Whereas those living below 500 meters were not so we were found. We found a very clear and easy to use Differentiator points there so we could compare households that lived just above with those households just below So that we could really get a strong causal attribution from the cash itself So what were we able to find from that? So I think there's a few things to point out there I think one and this I think that's a few points to point to highlight in terms of what it doesn't tell us So one is that it was not a study comparing cash assistance to in-kind support All of those households living above and below 500 meters were had We're provided food vouchers Electronic vouchers for food assistance, but only those living above were We're provided with cash assistance. And so that's the piece that's the effect of the cash that we were really interested in in understanding The second thing it doesn't do is provide us a statement that cash works in all settings for all refugees everywhere As much as that would have been great It tells us about you know those populations living just above and below that that threshold And we would want to take great caution in trying to extrapolate from there and really build on the number of studies that have come before And and I'm sure we'll come after to contextualize that Another last thing I think that we need to be cautious with is is also just the The fact that we would want we want to continue a full investigation of the effects of cash So things like gender implications or protection issues That that were Highlighted through the findings, but that we would want to really dig in Dig a lot deeper into to understand fully So what did it tell us then? So there were a few things that it pointed to in terms of In terms of the effects so one was You know really positive findings around what households are spending in on the intention was that the cash would be used for Winter assistance so for winter warmth materials What the research found was that? People were spending money on basic needs so food water warmth materials as well But what I'd also found was that people weren't necessarily spending it entirely on on warm supplies or even in the majority case on one more materials and About ten dollars was spent ten dollars of the hundred dollars per month was spent on winter warmth materials And the vast majority was still spent on food and water And this was in the context of you know all households also receiving food assistance putting in context You know how that could be explained there's a couple things that should be considered so one is just the The fact that households were also largely in debt So across the board every household was found to be at least five hundred dollars in debt per month And was carrying that debt burden And so the extent to which there was need in terms of just covering basic needs that was huge A second thing was just really looking at the context in Lebanon And it wasn't as cold a winter as people were expecting so that could potentially explain some of this Other findings were all positive too. They were reduced negative coping mechanisms, you know control Households we're sending their kids out to work more than people who households that had received cash assistance households that have received cash assistance were able to spend more on education spend more on On on food and good portion sizes for their families An important finding for us was also that out of the households who were interviewed 80% of those Said that they preferred cash even when they were receiving cash and in kind 80% said yes, we would prefer cash This might not seem surprising to you or I I think I would prefer cash in most most instances too But I think in terms of the ongoing discussions of what we use the fact that people was speaking for themselves and Stating their own preferences in such a in such a strong way was was meaningful Beyond the household level impacts that were also positive impacts on locally so in terms of market effects There were no no sustained inflationary impacts. There was also a Calculated multiplier effect of two point one three dollars on every dollar that was dispersed and In terms of one of the important findings that that we were interested in and the government of Lebanon was interested in as well was the issue of social tensions, so the there was a perception that providing cash to Syrian Syrian refugees with Would increase tensions with local Lebanese populations, but that wasn't found to be the case and actually in Actually relationships improved So what are we doing with this? So this the findings are positive. We were excited to see We were excited to learn the positive effects of this large-scale program But I think for IRC and this is where I will deviate from what the research is telling us to what IRC is doing with this I think There are a few things three main points So one is that we're really taking on board this notion that people preferred cash the idea that people wanted to be able to Have the have access to cash and also then make Choices about what it was used for and the choices were all those kinds of choices that we would want to see in terms of humanitarian outcomes So meeting basic needs food water Shelter these were all things that that that align well with what we are interested in Alongside this I think that there is We we would like to take that to say that you know cash will and should be our default Position where where feasible where markets where markets allow for it and security provides the opportunity But taking that one step further to say that within that there is also an emphasis for us on digital payments There's a huge interest There's a huge interest and opportunity in terms of The efficiencies that that would provide and that's something that we will continue to invest in So to do that there are two things that we would focus on and one is around Preparedness and in our emergency work, and then the second is around response so in prepare on the preparedness side We are looking at Continuing to I think one thing that we're looking at is really trying to unpack Some of the operational aspects of what it means to deliver cash in in emergencies So despite the findings that you know cash works one thing that we're really dissatisfied with is how long it takes how expensive it remains and and how Potentially unsatisfactory it is for the recipients in terms of not only that the cost that implies for them But the the waiting times that it it involves So things that we will focus on are Pre-positioning and and preparing for cash deployments ahead of crises And then really really holding a high bar around the metrics that are used for Measuring responses and response times following a crisis so the last the last thing that I will talk about and then and then I'll Hand over to Sarah is just the fact that in doing this and this is why these kinds of conversations are very important to us Is that we don't want to do this alone is that I think one of the things that we've seen both through the Lebanon? case study But also through our global operations is that for an NGO to go out and develop preparedness maps in every country in which It's operational if we're asking every NGO to go and do that You know we we may as well we may as well give up now What we are interested in doing is making sure that we're able to work with others so with other NGOs with with government with government partners with the private sector to look at both how we can incentivize different kinds of different kinds of collaborations so stemming this bridging this Humanitarian development divide, but then also trying to look at and face head-on what the risks would be in doing that digital payments from our perspective and our Cash is not new But the way that we approach cash could be quite disruptive And it may mean that some of us are some of the actors traditionally involved in in its delivery may no longer have a purpose within that And that's a conversation that we're keen to sort of drive forward and and have open me and with with courage So that so that we can look at you know the strongest humanitarian outcomes Great and so many interesting points to build upon and so useful to see on some of this rigorous research coming out because in a sense We've shifted the debate on cash transfer programming. It used to be well can can we do it and the answer is yes It's been yes for quite some time I mean if you look at pilots being done in 2005 2006 2007 2008 But we're continuing to develop around well, how should we do it? What does it mean and now just picking up on that last point? It's it's that it also has some fundamental implications for how aid is delivered and who delivers it But I'm going to talk a bit about I come from a humanitarian background I'm a humanitarian researcher I was also an aid worker and I've been working on cash in different ways since 2006 and so I'm going to talk about some of the You know some of the realities about the humanitarian settings and taking this forward in the humanitarian system Because there's a lot of momentum for cash It still remains an extremely small portion of humanitarian aid compared to in kind for various reasons and there's also some very you know legitimate focus on financial inclusion and digital payment systems But it comes from two humanitarian settings We also need we need to keep in mind some of the challenges and some of the weaknesses in Taking some of these payment solutions forward And so one of the first points is you know vouchers were just mentioned there in passing electronic vouchers being used in Lebanon and It's something we need to just keep an eye on for now I think whereas we actually saw a lot more cash versus in kind around you know when cash was first sort of picking up speed Now we're seeing a lot more cash versus vouchers We're seeing more vouchers now than we certainly did when when cash programming was was You know being piloted a bit more several years ago, and why is that well one is the Syrian response? There are some reasons why vouchers are being chosen related to government, so I'm not saying that they shouldn't be used at all But it's also that aid agencies are looking for ways to control this approach And that has a that has implications for the systems that they're going to be using to deliver it the The description for this meeting said well world food programs delivering 30% of its assistance in cash now Technically that's not actually correct. It's 30% in cash and vouchers, and as we lump those together We're actually talking about two very very different things And I'm also involved in a in a study for a different for the UK government on the value for money of cash transfers And I think that's because again as we're taking evidence forward We're looking for some of the more specific questions not just will it work But what does it mean for cost effectiveness? Well, what does it mean for impact? And I'm not going to get too much into those findings because it really is more of a cash versus vouchers versus in kind Discussion spoiler alert though it depends depends on the context depends a lot on how you design a program It's not just what you give or what you do. It is how you do it And I don't think people are ever really satisfied of the answer. It depends but good news We are looking at the factors that it depends on So we moved past that quite a bit But one of our case studies was was Lebanon and what I think is interesting there is I mean Electronic systems are not necessarily more expensive or less expensive than cash. It depends on how they're being done So WFP gave us numbers and please don't tweet this or anything That said that you know they're using their system for cash was more expensive than using their system for vouchers That's because it was down to a loading fee Related to using the card But what we have to look at well is does that mean that every systems that way or does that has to do with a particular system? Getting cost data is really really tricky and you think but well We all have budgets and we know age, you know banks will tell you how much the transfer fees are But agencies put their costs in different ways. They're going through different channels There's different intermediaries and there's different ways of negotiating fees So another agency has been looking at a slightly different fee structure for that system So and so it's not necessarily that electronic systems or digital systems are less expensive If you look at studies from Lebanon and a few others that exist for humanitarians who operate doing very short-term programs It can be a large investment in the beginning a lot of the savings that we've seen in a couple of studies coming out Is that it becomes cheaper over time? But if you're doing a short-term program, well, then what does that mean? So agencies, you know in the humanitarian setting They do prioritize the systems that are going to be the least costly that are going to reach the most people and That you know, they're not necessarily looking at issues around well What does this mean for the longer term because that's simply not, you know, their priority? The the purpose is really to reach people quickly and that's not to to criticize them or to criticize the system that I work for It's because there's trade-offs. There's trade-offs between different objectives on my case study was in Philippines. You had different agencies using mainly remittance I mean it was mainly remittance systems that were remittance systems Systems that were used to deliver cash. One agency chose to use mobile money And why was it one? Well, because they were working more on recovery related They had multiple transfers They really had an objective of linking people to systems and the other eight agencies of which there were at least 25 Had priorities on immediate disaster response. Remittance system is extremely well developed It was a natural choice for going in and using the systems so You know, what does that mean if we're talking about these payment systems for? Humanitarians it usually means that they're going to use a system that's in place That's most convenient that's going to have the most access and they're going to reach people the quickest So digital payment systems can be you know can be a game changer when they're there But I would say humanitarians are not the people that you look for to be necessarily expanding them Because they're also not very reliable if you look right now. We've got We've got annual funding cycles We've got Unfortunately world food food program has announced that they're going to be suspending a lot of their assistance if they're not reaching They don't get the funding that they need and so it's not necessarily When you're looking at using a humanitarian aid as a vehicle you have to keep in mind all these dynamics and all the weaknesses Within the system itself and getting back to our Lebanon case study Well, one of the value for money headlines wasn't about the cost of different systems It was about well, we've got on both cash and vouchers being used We have ATM cards paper vouchers electronic vouchers being used We have cash and vouchers being used for 14 different objectives from winterization to health to food to education to even accessing legal assistance and You know and it's being done by 30 different aid agencies So if you think that the when you step back and think about using cash That's that it can be done to to achieve any any objective and it's it's the flexibility that's the advantage So what does it mean when we have this compartmentalization within it? And what does that mean for the systems that people are being used and being able to take those forward in ways that might be more strategic? So it's not necessarily about the system. They use it's about the reasons why aid agencies are often divided and compartmentalized And we have to just keep in mind those those issues when we're moving forward So I would just close by saying Don't underestimate the tendencies for aid agencies to try to incorporate solutions on their own terms Cash can cross all of the things that divide the humanitarian system It can cross the clusters it can cross silos it can even cross mandates However, what's happening with cash is that people have the tendency to incorporate it and I will now do cash for food I will now do cash for children and I will now do cash for winterization when households do not divide their lives According to objectives and according to sectors and oddly this is seen as a challenge But it's really a Trojan horse a much needed Trojan horse for a lot of the weaknesses within the humanitarian system But we need to keep those weaknesses in mind and not gloss over them more looking at ways We might be able to identify opportunities for using cash basis systems to achieve longer-term objectives related to You know access to financial systems great Well, thanks for having me. Thanks everyone for coming today I think you've all made my life very easy by saying things. I agree with so I'll try to add something And go from there. I'm actually gonna pick up pick up on something both of you mentioned. I think the Lebanon program was cash for winterization and Then people spent it on food and the way the report and it gets talked about is people didn't use it for winterization and that's sort of the point that we went in thinking that that's what folks needed and For reasons some potentially we could have known and some we couldn't like it wasn't a very cold winter That's not what people needed and that's kind of the value of cash and to Sarah's point I think a lot of the siloing of cash programs that gets lost in at give directly we've been asked to Can you do a program showing that cash is better for x-child nutrition? And we've really pushed back against that because I think when you reduce cash to a single metric You actually defeat the point of cash I'll talk about two things the what and the how I think when we started give directly I my background was research initially before I got into implementation more When we started give directly and started conceiving it in the late 2000s and went around talking to people the The response was very consistently. You're crazy We were asked whether we were smoking crack We then got asked whether the recipients were smoking crack And then there was a whole discussion around who was smoking the crack But that was the conversation and world food program vouchers cash It was basically nothing at the time And it was strange because coming from an academic background It existed cash was nothing new give directly was not the first group to do cat Governments had been doing it for a decade at that point We were the first and only non-profit exclusively dedicated to it But we certainly weren't the first to introduce it, but the story was you're crazy I think here we are what five five years later, and the rhetoric has completely changed I think cash is starting to be seen as the benchmark and you'll hear things like well The cash debate is over or it's almost over and I would like to agree with that but just Also be conscious of the fact that due to some of these political challenges that in many cases Policy has lagged of kind of where the debate in this room has been I think we have some of the heroes of those policy fights here I think us AID has changed their policy in a humanitarian context largely thanks to Kay and others Where cash has become a bit of a benchmark? In parts of USAID I'm similarly for the IRC so it's starting to change But it hasn't quite gone as far as a lot of us would like so it's not over yet That leads us to the second part of the question which is not the what do we do? But how do we do it and I think that debate is just starting and I think this dialogue is about that debate Which is great. We're doing cash How do we do it and I think we have a long ways to go there? I'll start with some very high-level numbers and then just walk through some of the specific challenges that we and other folks face The World Economic Forum released a report Looking at the overall cash transfer market and the numbers were somewhere 400 billion to 500 billion of government to individual cash transfers But I thought was most striking about that report was not the headline number But the number that about 40 billion of that is leaked and disappears Either through pure leakage or operational cost each year 40 billion 40 billion is about twice The international giving that kind of US philanthropists give each year So that tells us if we can solve the how we do it problem It would almost be the same as doubling an entire sector of philanthropy or total US giving So it's pretty remarkable and I hope and I hope this the beginning of a conversation where we start spending more time on The how we do it and this and you can talk about cash I mean we've spent a bunch of time working in India When you look at the programs and you look at the leakage and operational cost You're talking numbers between 50 and 75 percent of the actual program cost So can we get that down to five ten twenty percent even? So that's kind of the first part then you say well, what what is the problem? Why why is it? So expensive and I won't go into too much details but if you just think of the simplest program and I'll use a voucher program which speaks a bit to the power of moving towards mobile money and systematic solutions In the simplest form of a voucher program or coupon program You literally have someone going door to door giving out coupons to people or first they identify people and maybe collect some information with pen and paper That comes back to an office someone may enter it into Excel If you're lucky there's a decision about whom to give to and you go back out and distribute it It may be distributed in vouchers. It may be given to the post office to distribute to the post office Now you start to think well wait a second. Well, how do you know that people we think are getting are getting?  What's the problem? You're getting 50 cents. There's another issue And in many cases the vouchers can actually be in transferable before you start to get towards mobile money and systems So now you've built a system Which is not auditable So you built a system for giving out lots of money hundreds of billions of dollars and It's not auditable. You say, okay. Well, what's another system that I can think of that moves hundreds of billions remittances credit cards But those systems are subject to very strict regulations Around knowing your customer and the way those payment systems can operate You need to know who you're sending to Western Union spends a lot of money on Compliance to make sure they know with certainty who's getting that that they are not on a terrorist list and so on and Right now those standards have not been applied to a rapidly growing sector Which is concerning because you do want to know who's getting the money And you do want to know it's getting there without the leakage and extreme costs that a lot of these programs have The next question may be well, don't we know how to do this? Yes with a lot of caveats and the way I think about this is think about sending your Christmas gift to your family How do you know it got there? Well, you probably get a UPS tracking code You probably go on the UPS website and you see that it got picked up at the packing station two hours ago So you feel pretty good Few days later you see that your mom signed for the package and you can track that entire process Well, how did UPS get there UPS spent a billion they do spend about a billion dollars a year on technology developing those systems Which sounds great. Let's just port over these logistics and payment systems The problem is they don't work And they don't work for a few reasons Connectivity is an issue. You can't assume connectivity. So Those little brown devices aren't going to work all the time Identification you can't assume that someone's going to pull out their license and show you who they are Or that there's going to be some form of a liable ID and Because you wind up working in places with weaker legal systems You get your agent workforce tends to be less reliable.  It just becomes a lot harder. So now we have a whole new set of technology problems and The reality is that we're not Investing in solving them. We are in mastercard and lots of folks are starting to get involved but it is a different technology problem and It is a problem that if you get wrong can have dramatic consequences I was just with someone that put in place a payment system Great, and they forgot to lock the database Which if you code is a pretty basic thing that you don't that you do you lock the database Well, what happened is the transactions got overwritten so that the balance did not equal The sum of the transactions and it's like problems like this still exist in wide scale And those are the problems that we need to solve and we need to solve them at scale Not just for the humanitarian cash programs not just for the development cash programs But for the systems that will actually change a lot of these people's lives And I think everyone kind of plays a rule I think as we see the policy shift from OFDA and others KYC regulations changing and this is what's going to get actors to act this Kind of speaking from give directly's perspective We've taken a very aggressive stance on metrics and improving operations But the reality is that a lot of that does not get rewarded in the contracting procedures We're not at a place where everybody can measure efficiency Be subject to KYC Once we get there Agencies will follow and I think we'll see a pretty dramatic shift Great, thank you all so we've had a lot of strands to pick up on but in preparation for this conversation I think one of the things we consider were Where do we want to jump off from so well? We make the assumption that in some context cash is better than commodities and then from there that in some of those Context it is possible to build sort of a digital railway to make this process more efficient I think we've heard a lot of ifs and perhaps and so I think it would be great if you all can highlight some examples of context where Okay, this cash is better than a commodity and then this The system of cash delivery is already robust enough that we can conceptualize building sort of a stronger pathway for other types of aid or financial inclusion off of that Whether it's actual or a sort of hypothetical do we hear some of that I'm happy to start I was actually just in Zimbabwe about two weeks ago Working with the USA admission there our mission to Zimbabwe is What we call a humanitarian assistance plus mission So we really don't do much in long-term development investments because of the relationship with the government there so it's primarily Food assistance and much of that food assistance under the food for peace program has recently Switched to cash assistance And Zimbabwe is a great market where there is a very aggressive mobile money provider There are actually three, but there's one that's quite dominant led by the dominant telco. It's called echo cash and What you're seeing now is almost after two or three years You're seeing almost saturation of the urban markets And so what is become the sort of commercial game for the digital payments digital financial service providers is Okay, how do we how do we get the the rest of the 60 70% of the country where we know? It's it's harder to figure out where to start building out our agent infrastructure People are typically poor so our revenue is going to be less so we need greater volumes It's just a little bit trickier of a commercial case for them to make And then you have us aid who is explicitly needing to get cash out to these same rural population sets and so a partnership Really enabled us aids implementing partners who were already out in the community and had Defined targets and defined criteria of who the assistance was to go to We're able to work with the commercial service providers to help set up that infrastructure and That's to use the payment rails to both deliver the aid I would say much more efficiently certainly more transparently there were more upfront costs But getting to the point of preparedness and that the recurrent costs even starting in a year or two are already coming way Way down. There's there's going to be clear cost savings within within a one-year cycle and you see the service providers really Now chasing after and investing in this business Kind of in a bespoke fashion for us because now they're seeing the opportunity to capture the remittance recipient market from because many people get in these rural areas get remittances from South Africa, Botswana and nearby countries and so you get this sort of beautiful synergistic Relationship whereby we are not only you know more efficiently more effectively delivering assistance to the rural poor population sets that we care about but we're also Bringing them into a formal financial system probably for the first time ever Which you know as soon as that happens they have a whole range of other products that become available to them And they're linked in a much more direct way to their family members and social networks And you have helped catalyze the commercial model for for making this poor more difficult to reach A group of people actually viable customers So that's just one of many I've got a bunch of this I Would say so we've had a few yeah, we've got a few different examples where we've gone from cash transfers and cash payments in that have transitioned either out of Existing agriculture programs or have transitioned back into ongoing recovery programs And we've seen that in a number of different contexts I think the key thing for us though is not assuming that that's an easy transition to make and the Difference between a using Using digital payments for a transfer purpose and then thinking about what that same individual needs when they're thinking about a livelihood Purpose so whether they're thinking about Making payments when they're thinking about savings and the different kinds of savings products that they might need that there is some That there is some work that needs to go into the actual redesign process there And I feel like that's where that's again That's one of these kind of key points where if we're not attentive to where that connection may be made and that sort of fluidity between The transfer product versus the the savings product or payment product That's where I think we can sometimes these can fall down But but we've seen great examples in certainly in East Africa a number of examples there as well as in South Asia and Pakistan Afghanistan So in terms of sort of silos or who gets included when a system like this makes that transition I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts. We mentioned for example presenting an ID or know your customer I would imagine that as a system becomes more sort of robust and part of kind of an economic inclusion or financial inclusion Railway the the barrier to access increases and so going from sort of What you need to show to qualify right for humanitarian aid and then sort of how we can build up. There's quite a distance Particularly for those who are typically excluded so women Youth the more vulnerable and so how are you all thinking through addressing that gap? I mean, it's a funny one or not funny ha ha But the issue is that on from a humanitarian perspective and that's what I come from like That's the first question the question for me isn't sort of what happens later It's how do you make sure everyone is in? How do you make sure that the most vulnerable people benefit and all of that will influence the systems that you determine that you decide to use? It'll certainly influence the level of ID that you ask. I find it very curious that on That giving people money we've been giving transferring resources and humanitarian aid for years and We are applying a severe double standard once it moves into cash It can be it can be the same value you can give someone three times the value in food aid and you do a thumb print You know now I'm not saying that that's always the case But the second that cash came in as the resource being transferred it upped the bar in terms of several things Now I think that we should be raising the bar on a lot of it not in terms of this exclusivity But in terms of standards so it's not so much that we should say oh We should apply our usual standards that we've been using for in-kind assistance to cash But actually we should use some of these standards that we're applying to cash in terms of accountability in terms of looking at the Efficiency issues in terms of making sure that people have access to the system to all the aid that we use so my primary concern is around ensuring not so much that That you know and that a more open system, you know that we apply better standards later but actually making sure that on That we're making sure that the priority that the focus in the first place is on access to the systems because from a humanitarian Perspective that's going to be the first and the greatest and the most important and when you're you know When you're looking at systems that humanitarians are using then then that's going to be the challenge How can we deal with some of these trade-offs and some of these competing priorities on the that are inevitable essentially when it comes to that? Like no, and I think you can look at requirements for ID as a burden and I think Using a national ID would be and it would eliminate a lot of the most vulnerable people or you can think about more broadly What identity is as a way of getting the people who deserve the benefits the benefits to prevent them from being coerced To prevent money going to ghost households or households that don't actually exist But have somehow showed up on their enrollment database and goes to someone Administering the program's family member. So if you think about identity in that way, I think we've gotten to a point where we're getting pretty good Fingerprints aren't perfect veined There are lots of ways that you can define identity and I think thinking about identity as a way to make sure if people get What they're supposed to get as opposed to a bureaucratic hurdle is the right way to think about identity sure I Supposed to agree that there are many different ways to define identity But I think once we get to sort of the bank level financial inclusion They're really a very narrow set of ways to define identity. So how how are you all tackling that? Sorry, we're so far from that. I think we're at a point where we're giving out physical pieces of paper With in many cases no identity. So I think the gap to bank level identity is a long one So I think there's a lot of steps we can take before that Scarlet that I think when you step out of the humanitarian assistance space a little bit more into the development world This issue comes up quite a bit An ID has traditionally been one of the greatest Barriers to access for the poor to the formal financial system. I do think that the Momentum globally is going in the right direction that as we see the Alliance for financial inclusion the better than cash Alliance the G20 Commitments to expanding financial inclusion Fadoff recognizing financial exclusion as a risk, you know it just as much as AML and terrorist finance You're starting to see as new regulatory regimes Are rethought recrafted? They're emerging with really pretty creative approaches that balance and take a really proportional balanced risk assessment of creating maybe tiered accounts So that if you're not able to show any form of ID whatsoever You are able to come into the the systems, but you're The amount you're able to store the amount you're able to transact or capped and then as you're able to become more fully Compliant with KYC these these limits start to lift. That's not universal yet, but I think it's a great Trend that certainly as new as new regulations and new policies come out That's becoming the new gold standard and I do think that the development community in particular and humanitarians actors Especially can really place a really critical sort of connective tissue rule in terms of making sure because one thing that often NGOs have In the field is they know the customers, right? And these might not be customers that have access to a national ID card or the gold standard But they know generally who they are and they're able to I think work with with financial service providers And you know find ways to to meet the compliance mechanisms We're seeing that quite a bit where NGOs are really the ones that are actually Helping to overcome that hurdle for our IDs, especially among more vulnerable populations I think you look at Financial inclusion programs that focus on for instance use populations or particularly vulnerable groups of women or Or disabled groups where where identity issues As well as physical issues may be a larger constraint to accessing these services that that there are negotiations that take place, but the Problem is how well the challenge is how do we get the negotiations to elevate from one INGO speaking to one financial institution into something that's going to be much larger scale and that's that's a tool for the development actors and the financial actors to to use together So you mentioned obstacles them and in Michael you mentioned Sort of we're really at the level where we're giving paper to people still and you know Even just conceptualizing how we can digitize that and make it auditable Is a challenge so immediately I think of sort of cost and I hear what you're saying that there's an immense cost You know funds lost in the transfer right now because these systems are not auditable But to get a system there, how do you sort of convince a Community particularly the humanitarian community, which is you know sort of its immediate response in some cases There isn't a lot of lead time on I think this example in Zimbabwe is slightly different But I mean if you're thinking sort of Haiti or you know Immediately after a catastrophe it may just be that that context is not a good one right to apply this But how do you sort of get around the cost? Obstacle and then the sort of scalability obstacles Really strongly about this so So I think so I think we need to stop talking about There's only so much we can do because it's humanitarian It needs to be fast and we only care about short-term because the reality is is that of the countries where Humanitarian action is taking place the majority of these are recurrent crises The majority of these are protracted crises when we're looking at those places where it is those sudden Onset natural disasters. Those are the minority every year. Those are not the majority And they are increasing but again given that they are increasing and we are seeing greater occurrence in them The opportunity for preparedness for prepositioning is only greater So I think there is a lot that can be done so that we are holding ourselves to that bar and being less Reactive and more prepared I think there's also a lot that can be done In terms of the the bar that we are holding for ourselves I don't think I think it's interesting, you know, we've had Interesting conversations about this when we've talked about, you know, what does success look like in humanitarian action and often? It's just doing it. It's just getting it done, right? It's just did we get Stuff delivered did we did we you know, we said that we would deliver cash Did we deliver the right amount of cash to the right number of people? Questions of how we did it in terms of how long did it take to get cash to people? How much did it cost you to do that? How much ended up in their pockets rather than in the admin expenses of your operation? Those questions aren't asked. How much time did the did the beneficiaries who were on the receiving end of that assistance Spend coming to get their cash and what cost did it incur for them? Those questions are just never raised And I do think, you know, we do have IRC's got a very strong commitment to building evidence And I think that's the the this we want to push that out further into the humanitarian sector to say that You know, it shouldn't just be left to the development field to build evidence and use those benchmarks But really the humanitarian sector should also be holding itself to those similar bars Yes So basically I think the gap in evidence that people often raise is what you want versus what you have and that's different than what you need And what you have Because cash-based assistance other than malnutrition has been the most researched and evaluated Tool and humanitarian response ever it's keeping me in a job and I appreciate that But I really honestly thought that after contributing or writing the good practice review on cash transfer programming I was like great. Well, we've put that together Done and dusted because what we know from a couple hundred evaluations at least ten studies using randomized Methodologies is that it works on when it comes to women. We know well, it depends when it comes to crop corruption We know actually no more or less risky when it comes to nutrition. We know it definitely depends And when it comes to whether you can do it the answer is yes What we know is that you need to basically be thinking through these things in advance that you need to have the right systems And that you need to basically address the fundamental challenge that aid agencies have been doing something else for a very long time And that they can we have to basically have some really strong incentives negative and positive For delivering the most appropriate form of aid because we owe that to people So when it comes to evidence, I'd say there's actually, you know a fair amount of you know a large amount of evidence I think I think you know WFP spent and and if pre here did these, you know Very extremely high caliber studies for randomized control trials on cash transfers Looked at impacts looked at costs looked at cost effectiveness And they cost 10 million euros and I honestly think that was actually worth it because they needed that caliber of evidence To be able to move forward at a strategic level. However, we can't just keep saying well We need more evidence on it. What we need to be working on is why aren't we acting on what we know to be true? What we know to be true is most humanitarian aid is protracted and recurrent. Why do we have annual funding cycles that basically? Work against doing this kind of longer-term investments that we're talking about It's not that we don't know where disasters are going to happen for the most part and that they're going to be happening for a long time And so this again gets into the the politics of it all and I think those are the very tricky questions that we need to be working through and navigating because there are so many potential advantages when it comes to doing the right thing And giving people assistance that could actually even when you do it poorly, they will use it for what they need it most Which is I think extremely positive So we have to be tackling these because otherwise when it comes from the humanitarian side We're going to keep hitting the wall that we know what to do. We know what systems we know where we should invest We have these great ideas, but why isn't it moving forward? So I think tackling and navigating and being strategic is what we got to focus on Great, so I think Michael had a question I was gonna add something to rod as I completely agree with everything I just said But to your original question on well, doesn't it cost more? What's the problem with scale? I think we forget that Literally just to come back printing things and shipping them and we can go to the Kenyan example We're literally paper gets shipped up and back between the field seven times is really expensive And the best benchmark I have for this is if you think about what happened in the US We also used to have food stamps that were printed coupons and then folks like Xerox and JP Morgan And there was a campaign to digitize the US government cut spending on that program I think it was about 50% it was dramatic as we went from that old system to the new system So yes, the new systems cost money But so did the old ones and they cost a heck of a lot more in many cases and then in terms of scale and speed I don't think you can even compare. I think as you think about Humanitarian now you can put the digital system in place Where when something happens you can press a button and pay those people that have already been enrolled in the platform That's not possible with physical networks and physical logistic systems. I just think yes It costs something and yes it takes some time, but it's dramatically better than what we have today We run a risk when we start to think about humanitarian assistance and agriculture assistance and education assistance and health assistance Where as a as a broader humanitarian development community We're not very well poised whether it's through funding cycles or in our case specific earmarks from Congress and the way our indicators are set up we are it's so hard for us to make investments in long term, you know cross-cutting infrastructure and So even now when we hear about the humanitarian assistance base talking about preparedness and pre-positioning things And in talking about linking that to cash transfers done electric electronically, it's it's still a full step away from thinking okay How can we work to build these systems up and have them in place? So that they're there and they're part of the lasting economic infrastructure of countries before a disaster strike right and so Obviously a Bola is something that's consuming Probably about half of the building that I work in right now, and we're seeing this play out exactly there We're as the you know initial crisis, especially in Liberia is starting To to look like there's a little bit of some good news on the horizon We're thinking a lot now about economic recovery and the absence of these basic payments rails Both to have been able to continued payments to a bowl of responders but now to be able to effectively implement social protection policies and support communities that have been Devastated by this epidemic. I mean the opportunity cost is huge and You know watching and we're part of this right now watching the development community Come together and try to manage 50 different Organizations now working in Liberia all of which want to import their own voucher system And we'll say wait wait wait, you know, we're gonna try to coordinate all of this and that's fortunately the UN has this job not us but making sure that That all of these very significant investments are actually something that's going to last and provide a platform for resilient broad-based economic growth and the opportunity to Implement effective social protection policies I think is really critical and it's hard to do that in the midst of a crisis And so to Ratha's point about all of us collectively thinking more about preparedness, you know, I think that's really You know just an absolute critical priority for us as a policy community All right, so one more question for me, and then I'll open it up for everyone else So in terms of sort of opening this up policy-wise and sort of what the reticence is to do what many agree is sort of The right thing to do in certain contexts Wouldn't this really involve a sort of getting in bed with a lot of the financial firms so for example, you mentioned JP Morgan and How would that be regulated? At sort of a scale in terms of what their cut is right of delivering these This assistance and then to wouldn't this really involve putting a good number of aid workers out of work Which I mean, maybe we can all agree could be a good thing Morgan is not interested in the In the Liberian No, I mean I think that there is I Think that there is So I think there's a big opportunity there, and I think that for financial institutions Telecom companies The private sector is a whole that has a role to play in this I think one of the one of the problems that we have at the moment and it's this idea of you know You go Lebanon, you know anyone who's in this room who's worked in Lebanon in the last couple years We'd see that there's you know, there's an extraordinary number of NGOs working there, and they are immensely coordinated I mean the the level of effort that goes into Coordination activities in that one country is really phenomenal and and it's and it remains Unbelievably fragmented operations remain incredibly fragmented and there is and that involves them That's it's fragmented in terms of the approaches that are used in and actually delivering cash, but also in terms of the engagements with financial institutions with the government of Lebanon and so while So so I think we need to as we're actually engaging the private sector in this conversation It's it's important for us as the NGO community to come together and not have you know the the premium be on Coordination, but I think really be concrete about what our asks are and what is required and what we're expecting them to deliver on And then be open to really thinking about you know There is going to be a cost and there is going to be a need for Incentivizing adaptations in business models existing development business models are not effective for humanitarian action They don't allow for they don't have the adaptive adaptability or the flexibility that rapid humanitarian response requires So what is it? What are the incentives or? What are the incentives that we can put in place to make that a compelling business case for the private sector to take on and For us to be comfortable with the idea that some of that comes at a cost But that might be an immediate a short-term cost rather than a long term a long term sustained one And in terms of putting aid workers out of business. I mean, that's okay with me I'm not against it by any means but the challenges is not so much that everyone's trying to keep their jobs, but Who is it if you really thought okay? We've got this tool. We've got this system We've got a disaster. We need to reach large numbers of people who has the capacity to reach large numbers of people donors Don't really coordinate. They don't come together So you're already talking about a division a bit in funding now you might be able to bring them together slightly on this front Um, it could be possible there. So now you're thinking okay We can bring a few donors at least together around unconditional transfers, you know Maybe use some common pooled funding system, but who has the capacity to target? Tens of thousands hundreds of thousands of people Because that's where a lot of the effort comes in it doesn't matter if everyone has a card You've got to know who needs to be in on that system unless you've essentially figured all of this out in advance And you know who's exactly affected and that becomes tricky with the monitoring as well So governments can do this government of Pakistan who delivered, you know, huge large number of social of cash transfers as a disaster response WFP works through the government of Philippines to reach a lot of people after high-end It excluded people who weren't already a part of the social protection system Then you've got a model where you can actually like it bring NGOs together around it So you could have a consortium approach. We saw that Somalia not digital payment system, but it happened Or you can work through large UN agencies who then subcontract NGOs who then work with local partners Which is essentially part of the model that we have now adding in a bit of the bilateral, you know Models within geo so I think it's that we have to tackle these questions not just about the financial system I think would be the easy part the problem is that you know Getting you know knowing who you're reaching and and also being able to monitor what happened with it It's it's the targeting. I think is it going to keep aid workers employed But let's go ahead and try to find some solutions around that My colleague Patricia has a mic And you you all have questions for our panel be happy to take them now. Here's one Do you want to raise your hand? First of all, it's great to see the progress that's being made in Haiti we tried to implement some of this just wasn't feasible partly because the bankers in Haiti wanted to have such extraordinary fees on top of it And we're now doing Ebola related work instead of color work And we're looking at building resilience capacity zones So we're doing assessments in these capacity zones and then trying to get resources to the communities themselves One piece of it that I haven't heard much about is how do you design the system? So it actually builds the value chain within the communities that it's serving Because if it pulls too much fees out or creates dependencies on large systems It actually may weaken the sustainability and resilience of the communities I'd be happy to take this. This is something we're thinking about right now and exactly in the context of the Ebola crisis And I really think that the power actually that that the donors have to be much more involved in having these aggregated conversations rather than having NGOs and implementing partners try to negotiate With service providers by themselves we've tried this in a couple of markets so far and Have been you know pretty pleased with the with the results of what happens when you come in is USAID or DFID or Gates Foundation and say you know I'm bringing all of my partners in this particular place to the table and we would like you know You start to negotiate what bulk rates would look like service level agreements Access if you know if necessary to ussd codes those sorts of things and because you have a real mismatch I think now between the NGO development community operating on the ground and The financial service providers and especially the new entrants into the financial service market the You know mostly the telephone companies who aren't used to working with each other and the new products aren't you know Aren't very flexible. They're often very expensive because of the business models that the providers are trying to make you know their revenue off of transactions and so this is again where I think donors some sort of institutional level of brokerage Can be can be very helpful I Think it needs to be commercially viable for those folks longer term I won't mention this specific example, but I was literally in a country that just put out to bid one of these big cash programs and One bank one A few two of the other banks pulled their proposal so we talked to them Why did you pull of all we ran the math and there's just we're gonna lose a lot of money on this So we went to the winner and said well, why? Well, how did you guys think about the economics? How'd you make it work and they hadn't was the short answer and they just oh it seems good. We're gonna do it That's really frightening Because what will likely happen and we've seen this other places that they will roll out this network and very quickly realize They're losing money and then stop it Stop investing in it and then you're going to have this cash program Which is a massive cash program midstream with this broken system that the providers not investing in That's part of the problem And I suppose what one of the interesting things I mean really interesting discussion is you know when you when you talked about the results of of this assessment here and 10% of the of the cash was actually spent on the purpose for which it was given and I suppose what strikes me very much is the siloed nature of Developmental and humanitarian organizations, you know we're an organization for health or we're an organization for agriculture I mean there's a It's more a common than a question But I think a huge amount of work to be done between the donors and the partners around If you're giving cash for health But I as a parent decide that there's a greater need within the family How is the impact going to be viewed at the end house? What's the evaluation going to look at was it a successful program? Was it not successful and on what basis? You know, and I think that we're not even close maybe to getting to those issues at the moment but I also think that You know taking this a step further and saying that it's okay for families to decide how they best want to use it Would actually remove a huge number of barriers that exist at the moment between partners and would and would allow us to Go to scale at a much better quicker level Hi, my name is Michael and I'm from include Mine is more like a comment and I think it's critical for us to to discuss further on collaborative partnerships between humanitarian efforts and also digital financial services Reason why I say that is because of the opportunities that can I mean Because of the challenges that both collaborations can solve So I'll give you an example. We're currently involved in an initiative in the Ebola affected countries Where there's a new material they afford to disboss a cash to victim as also to health workers and of course these countries are limited infrastructures, you know, even to Disboss funds digitally but one of the things that we found out is that when we We called, you know for, you know operators opinions on this They were really very interested even to increase the investment in Infrastructure to disboss this funds electronically. I mean we saw operators who are saying, you know what we'll roll out 10,000 POS in the next two weeks to get this sorted out So and it's it's very important for us to be aware that G2P initiatives or humanitarian Efforts Could actually be key to lifting some of the barriers with the uptake of DFX especially in countries in South-Saharan Africa. So for example the issues with Financial awareness and education, which is a very very strong Barrier to the uptake of DFS can be broken down when you have collaboration collaborations between You know, humanitarian efforts and you know DFS partners as well So I think it's it's very critical for us to continue to discuss this to see how you know, I know some of the Some of the humanitarian How they have strong affinity for cash, I mean the the result of what you just read out to us probably will want to You know incite you more to be focused on cash disbursement, but there's a need to start looking at Give a you know, disreputing this entry DFS So I can respond and I should have said actually a critical part of that Evaluation as well. There's the the 90,000 disbursements that were made were made through digital payments So just in case and so I tend to use cash somewhat synonymously with Digital payments and because in the vast majority of our work. That's what we're that's what we are doing So your point of you know, the focus on digital finance is well-taken I think that in in that partnership piece on the humanitarian and finance and digital finance sort of sector One of the things that's very I agree that there's an opportunity there But I think again, it's this it's this notion of where is the business case, right? So if we're thinking about Certain markets that we're working in Whether it's in Niger or looking at and I and within that I'm saying very localized areas I'm not talking about at a national level. I'm talking about high-risk areas or in certain parts of DRC, you know Not network coverage isn't isn't the same isn't uniform throughout people's Local populations comfort levels with digital finance tools mobile tools is not uniform across the board Likewise with merchants when it's a voucher program So I think what we where we do have while we do have that opportunity Someone has to bear the cost of actually doing working on the uptake issues and the adoption issues And that is something that can be folded into the humanitarian piece But I think we just need to be very clear on the on the cost associated with that and whether it's the humanitarian NGO That's bearing that or the or the financial institution or MNO MNO That that needs to be considered somewhere On the the piece around the Lebanon work and the silos. I Fully agree. I mean I think what we want to see and where where we want to get to is that we stop being quite So technocratic around the use of cash and start being a little more Trustful of both the evidence and what people are telling us we have sufficient evidence now in certain areas That people are on the whole using cash for the things that we would want it to be used for As I when we're looking at it in and in total Similarly, we're hearing loud and clear that this is what people would prefer. So now it's really up to our Our own institutions and really we need to go far up the food chain. It's not just our institutions, but we really need to be able to exploit those two those two pieces of Messaging that we're getting and and and really raise them so that we can change both the way that our planning processes take place And also the mandates of of our organizations and how we're expected to act on those I would just add one quick thing. It's not it's I think there are some encouraging numbers out there There is a recent project in Bihar Which actually put the choice to recipients so they had food coupons so a dollar food coupon And we actually offered them the opportunity to sell that coupon for 50 cents of cash or 75 cents of cash So less than the food voucher actually cost and you saw it depending on the actual amount somewhere between 60 and 80 percent of people selling it That's a very compelling. It becomes a very compelling case to the government which it has in Bihar Because they can save money because it costs a lot less fiscally to 50 cents than a dollar And they can pick up votes and I think that it's numbers like that and more projects like that which will help spread cash Devils advocate the other side of sort of the silo and giving the silo and receiving Can you think of some examples where you know and I know we've sort of moved beyond the cash and commodity debate but vaccination health interventions where Perhaps we may want to be a slightly paternalistic in terms of what what we want the aid to be spent on In certain contexts. I mean we've seen for example with the Ebola response Context where maybe the decisions that are being made by people are not sort of the best right right off the bat Until the risk is understood mosquito safe mosquito nets those kinds of things Yes Interesting because this is it's fundamentally a subjective and a philosophical question and what I decide on that might be different Than what someone else decides on that. I mean I personally think Give people as much flexibility as possible because you do not understand the trade-offs that they're making in these settings It might not become apparent for years Now, however, if your starting point is shelter in Philippines, you need to assist with shelter reconstruction That's not necessarily one where you don't want to you know engage in a very close format So there's just different options. You can either do conditional transfers whereby you verify that people are constructing along a certain way You can give vouchers for certain products. So it's certainly possible, but I think we have to recognize that a lot of this is Fundamentally a subjective question on how much you think that people should have the ultimate flexibility to sort out their own needs and That is going to in the answer from a lot of aid agencies is some some nervousness Because what we say around, you know trusting people and giving we have log frames, you know Think about USA and their log frame and we're supposed to say, you know The outcome indicator and the impact and once it doesn't become food consumption score or number of shelters Once you look at you know, how do you look at most significant change? I mean, can you just put that in the box? I think you should But it doesn't work very well when we talk about the realities of the bureaucratic system Mainly Congress who are We're speaking to you, but I would actually argue that it's not just a philosophical question I think it's a technological question as well I mean, I think it's important to realize that we're in the very early days right now of digital financial services that are made Explicitly to work among the poor and right now the systems are pretty clunky frankly the user interfaces are pretty bad Most of the businesses I think there are a handful we several vests in this room Probably can can agree on who those are that have really invested in in a business model as Michael mentioned That's that's going to be good for their business But that's also customer friendly and meets a lot of the financial literacy or financial capability questions That Michael from inshore mentioned But I think we're starting to see you know some products whereby you can have hybrids, right? And you're actually responding still to the needs of beneficiaries or clients one of impases products the mshwari product that lets people Lock away savings for a specific person purpose, you know to save up for school fees has been incredibly popular And there are ways now to keep some money liquid give people some choice and Also be a little bit more directive if that actually serves a policy goal So I think that we you know we shouldn't be too limited by sort of where we are today and what's available What we should be thinking about collectively is how do we continue to make the case that this is a huge You know opportunity cost a huge opportunity for businesses. I mean you still have You know two and a half billion People in this planet that are unserved and it's not that they're not making Financial transactions are making use of financial options. They're just typically pretty bad And so how do we really work together to create that narrative that this is you know? This is not only a Development imperative for those of us working in this space, but for the private sector partners help them see The opportunity to serve this new emerging customer base Thank you all very much for attending and we look forward to the next stage of this conversation


Forward-deployed USS Germantown pulled into Dry-Doc at Sesbo Shipyard to keep the ship seaworthy and mission ready for future deployments. We're due for a lot of maintenance. We do the Dry-Docs for upgrades of electronic systems, structure repairs. A lot of maintenance that goes into re-userships extensively. Therefore, this maintenance period is just as important so we can get it back at the speed. The last time the ship was not Dry-Doc was 2009 in San Diego. With the good project team that we have, I think after this Dry-Doc we can extend the love cycle of the ship maybe 20 more years. Pulling into Dry-Doc was only the first step in a long process that is set to restore full functionality to the story Germantown. Repairs are scheduled to finish in May. Seaman Kyle Palasti, Sesbo, Japan.


escape from reality by intoxicating ourselves in that acceptable form of living? When we say, is it right or wrong, you're asking the question in a moral way. I don't look at life as from the angle of morality. For me, the question is, only does it work or doesn't it not work?  Yes?  And of course, a human being is aspiring to be a full-fledged human being.  Whatever you have become, still there is a longing within you to become something more, isn't it? So obviously you don't know what is a full-fledged human being. So when you do not even know what is a full-fledged human being, where is the time for you to put yourself to sleep? See, any kind of intoxicant means in some way you're putting down life. One who knows how to manage his own thoughts and emotions, if you knew how to keep your thought and emotion the way you want it, would you keep yourself blissful or tense or miserable or what? I'm asking, it's a question. If your thoughts and emotions took instructions from you, would you naturally keep yourself in the highest level of pleasantness and of experience? You would, right? So if you were at the highest level of experience within you, would you want to put it down with alcohol or drug? No. So right now, our minds are in a state where it is causing enormous amount of stress and misery. You want relief at least at the end of the day. If you drink through the day, you will get labeled. So at least when you go home, a month ago I was in New York City, the large group of people. I asked them, what do you think is the percentage of people in New York City who can sit in the evening peacefully, not even ecstatic, just peacefully, without even a glass of wine. I'm treating glass of wine as a minimum dosage. They went into a debate and they said, five percent. Five percent of the people can sit peacefully in the evening without even a glass of wine. I was in London, among a very prominent group of people. I asked them, what percentage of people in London can sit peacefully without even a glass of wine? They said, less than one percent. I'm saying the entire world is getting there. You know why? Simply because human intellect is active like never before. Never before in the history of humanity, this many people could think for themselves.  You were not supposed to think.  If you thought for yourself beyond the book that was there, they usually took off your head because you were a nuisance. Yes or no? But for the first time in the history of humanity, more people are thinking for themselves than ever before. Once people… you start thinking for yourself, unless something is logically correct, you cannot swallow it, isn't it?  Even the worst kind of argument that is happening between people, you're watching the presidential debate and all this, worst kind of argument that's happening, for that person it makes sense. Yes or no? At home, husband and wife, there's an argument, both of them thinks the other is observed, but within themselves it's making sense to them what they're talking, isn't it? So unless it's logically correct, you cannot swallow it. So once this happens to you, what is happening in the world is, which has already happened to you and it's happening to a younger generation in a bigger way, is the heavens will collapse. Not a small accident, heavens are collapsing. This generation of people, though it has collapsed, they're somehow trying to keep it up. But I'm telling you, your children will pull down the heaven if it doesn't come down, because it's like this, what is there in heaven? Let's look at this. See in Hindu heaven, food is very good. There's also drink. So if you like food and drink, you must go to Hindu heaven. It's the best place to eat. Nala himself cooks for you. In another heaven, there are white-ground ladies floating in the clouds. If you like that kind of ambience, you must go there. If you go to another heaven, you will encounter virgin problems. No drink though there. So if you like that, you go there. But how do you go there? What is the GPS to get to heaven? This happened in a Sunday school in Alabama. Sunday school teacher was on full fire. The audience was not adults, tiny tots, but full-on going. So in the middle of this, in full… this thing, he asked, what do you have to do to go to heaven? Little Mary stands up and says, if I scrub the church floor every Sunday, I will go to heaven. He said, absolutely. Another little girl stands up and says, if I share fifty percent of my pocket money with my less privileged friend, I will go to heaven. Correct. Another little boy stands up and says, if I help people who are in need, I will go to heaven. Correct.    One of these things we will do.  It's best to put it back there when it's done. When you are done with this body, you must put it back into the earth, it's the most eco-friendly thing to do. So when you go to heaven, obviously you don't have a body. When you don't have a body, what will you do with good food and virgins? Nothing, it doesn't make any sense. So I'm saying, in the next twenty-five, thirty years, all heavens will collapse. Already it's collapsed in most people's minds. Probably the previous generation was actively thinking about going to heaven. You guys are like little, you know you're not going anywhere, but you were little afraid to deny it. Next generation will deny it actively. Yes or no? Your children will deny it for sure. So heavens will collapse. Heavens may collapse, but human longing to experience something more will not go. When this longing to experience something more becomes strong, the way we have managed this longing in human beings is, don't worry you're miserable right now, but if you don't drink this evening, when you go to heaven, rivers flow with wine. Not in small cups, rivers are flowing. So this hope, once it collapses, which is already collapsing in the next twenty-five, thirty years, it will vanish in the world. Once this happens, then people will move towards chemicals in a big way. Already the moment is huge across the world. So now, this is not a morality issue. This is just this. Look into my eyes and see, I'm always stoned. Never touched a substance. But I am all the time stoned. All of us sitting here in the same hall. We're breathing the same air. Probably we eat the same food. But this moment how I am within myself, I will not exchange this for anything in the universe.  Because this is bigger than that. Because human experience is cost from within. If you take charge of it, you create the experience that you want. If you don't take charge of it, accidentally you become high. If the drink worked well, you become high, otherwise you become something else. Now, if you take charge of the basis of your experience, you will naturally cause the most pleasant experience for yourself. So, this is not about drink. This is not about drug. This is about have you taken charge of your life or are you an accident? If you're an accident, anxiety is natural, isn't it? If you're anxious, you want to somehow put down life at least in the evening. If it doesn't allow you, at least in the weekend, you want to go down a little bit. If... See, the greatest thing that you have in your life, we are supposed to be the peak of evolution on this planet. Yes? Compared to any other creature, we are supposed to be the peak of evolution. In this peak of evolution, one thing that's happened to us is, physiologically, we are not as robust as other creatures. Yes? The greatest thing that's happened to us is, our intelligence blossomed. If our intelligence has blossomed, truly blossomed, then we should at least know how to make this absolutely beautiful and pleasant, isn't it? If intelligence has blossomed, if you want to create the world that you want, is it not important at least you're capable of creating yourself the way you want? Even what you want doesn't happen within you. How will it happen in your life? It is not about... For most people, it is not about their life is not happening the way they want it. Even their mind is not happening the way they want. That's all their misery is. This happened. On a certain day, a lady went to sleep. A lady went to sleep. In her sleep, she had a dream. In her dream, she saw a hunk of a man standing there and staring at her. Then he started coming closer, closer, closer. He came so close she could even feel his breath. She trembled, not in fear. And then she asked, what will you do to me? The man said, well lady, it's your dream.  Even your dream is not happening the way you want it. That's a problem.  Oh my god, this can do so many things to you. You don't need any external help. If your dream could be just the way you want, could you sit here creating absolute bliss for yourself? Yes or no? Yes. So even your dream is not happening the way you want it. That's where it is. Even the dream machine is not taking instructions from you. So the only way is to kill it. No, no, kill it. With intoxication, you're trying to kill it. In some way you're trying to kill it, isn't it? Put it to sleep. This is a… In terms of evolution, it's a regressive step. When ninety percent of the population on the planet drinks and drugs, let us say, you will see this. Unless we do something significant in the next… next fifteen to twenty years, if we do something significant, this can change. Otherwise, you will see in another sixty to seventy years where ninety percent of the human population will be in some kind of a chemical. Seventy percent of the US population is supposed to be on prescription medication. Thirty percent is buying it off the back streets, all right? The three major industries on the planet are the top industries are arms and armaments stand first. Firmaceuticals stand next. Alcohol stands third.  Alcohol is the third largest industry. So one… See, one takes you towards death. Another pretends to get you back. Another is hundred percent death. These are the three largest industries on the planet. Bigger than food, can you beat it? The food industry on the planet at the end of 2015 was seven point six trillion dollars. The pharmaceutical industry is seven point two trillion dollars. Now I think they've overtaken. That is, we're taking more medicine than food. Have we lost it or no? For sure we've lost it, isn't it? So probably in another five years, alcohol industry is bigger than food industry. This means we've definitely lost it, isn't it? So this is not about why should I not enjoy it.  If you want to enjoy this life, I will teach you a way where you can be super intoxicated. At the same time, super alert. How's that for you? Look at me. I'm all the time drunk.  I can. You've not seen me. I can go totally intoxicated any moment because all the time I'm on, all the time fully aware. This is what needs to happen to humanity, isn't it? And every human being is capable of this. They've just not paid attention in that direction, that's all. They're going for cheap solutions.