WASHINGTON – The World Bank on Tuesday approved a US$75 million grant from the International Development Association (IDA) for the Adaptive Social Protection for Increased Resilience Project (ASPIRE) that will support Haiti’s efforts to establish an adaptive safety net system to respond to shocks, including COVID-19, and to reduce vulnerability to food insecurity and future disasters.
World Bank Acting Country Manager for Haiti, Javier Suarez, said the project “provides immediate resources to help the most vulnerable households, while also supporting Haiti to establish the foundations of a social protection program to build resilience and develop human capital in the medium term.”
“Social protection systems have the potential to enhance human capital, reduce inequality, build resilience, and end cycles of poverty,” he noted.
An adaptive social protection system helps vulnerable households build resilience by investing in their capacity to prepare for, cope with, and adapt to shocks. The ASPIRE project will provide immediate support to poor and vulnerable households while increasing their resilience through regular, unconditional cash transfers and measures to improve health, nutrition, and financial inclusion.
The project is designed to enable the cash transfer program’s scale-up in emergencies, such as natural disasters or health crises. The project will also help build the Ministry of Social Affairs and Labour (MAST) capacity to improve social protection programs’ management and governance.
Unconditional cash transfers will be provided to an estimated 18,000 families (or 90,000 individuals), focusing on extremely low-income families located in rural areas prone to natural disasters and living with small children, pregnant women, or persons with disabilities. The project will initially focus on the Grande Anse department in Southern Haiti. It will also establish the foundations to operationalize the National Social Protection and Promotion Policy and allow for an additional 200,000 households to be registered in the Ministry of Social Affairs and Labour’s social registry.
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