SOS Children's Villages has partnered with a Kenya-based company to provide an electronic "smart" card that allows villagers affected by drought and famine to obtain food and cash (500 Kenya shillings or $5 USD) directly from local shops.
SOS Children’s Villages has partnered with a Kenya-based company to provide an electronic “smart” card that allows villagers affected by drought and famine to obtain food and cash (500 Kenya shillings or $5 USD) directly from local shops.
The pilot program, which is operable in three stores in Kenya’s northern town of Marsabit, is made possible by a partnership between SOS Children's Villages and Paystream Ltd, a firm in Kenya that is owned by The Business Phone Limited, a British international distributor of mobile payment terminals in Africa.
The card-based system is designed to increase the efficiency and reduce the cost of aid distribution to needy households by providing funds directly to the individual through a transaction system that can be monitored in real-time from SOS Children's Villages headquarters in Kenya. Donor organizations that rely solely on cash have often encountered complications such as misappropriation of funds and high transportation costs from food supplies brought from faraway sources.
The cards can only be used by approved card holders to buy SOS-designated items at SOS-approved food outlets, which have received from Paystream point-of-service devices to process the card-based payments.
The new system is the result of hard work on the part of SOS Children's Villages in Kenya, community elders, government authorities, and shop owners to ensure that families receiving food aid are able to access food items quickly, safely, and efficiently. Payments are secure and fast. For SOS the cards will significantly reduce the time and effort previously required to ensure that funds go where they are most needed.
Throughout East Africa, SOS continues to respond to drought and famine by providing health services, food and water to the hungry in villages and internally displaced persons (IDP) camps throughout Somalia, and to refugees in Kenya and Ethiopia. In Marsabit, Kenya, where the "smart" card program pilots a new method of distributing aid, SOS has educated the community about how the system works, the money that each card holds, and the kind of food eligible to purchase from participating stores.
“We are delighted to partner with SOS Children’s Villages and to be able to come up with a safe, reliable card-based solution to help food aid get to the right people,” said Sam Ndegwa, CEO of Paystream Limited.
For more information, visit http://www.sos-usa.org.
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