CLA Drives First-of-its-Kind Cash Grant Model in Morocco

Through open and transparent external collaboration and a collective willingness to adapt design, implementation, and models across stakeholders, cooperatives across Morocco now have relief in the face of repeated shocks.

USAID/Morocco’s Cooperative Financing Program (CFP) provides grants to vulnerable cooperatives in rural and urban areas to alleviate the negative economic consequences of the COVID-19 crisis and other shocks, fostering economic growth, stronger livelihood opportunities, and adaptive resilience capacities. USAID/Morocco is implementing this activity in partnership with GiveDirectly in collaboration with local Government of Morocco (GOM) partners such as the National Initiative of Human Development (INDH) under the Ministry of Interior (MOI) and local authorities. The activity targets thousands of shock-vulnerable cooperatives in five regions in Morocco, granting each approximately $10,000 to foster enhanced business and livelihood opportunities.

In designing this activity, USAID and GiveDirectly prioritized multiple components of the CLA Framework, namely external collaboration with host government actors and adaptive management to pilot a transformational model of providing capital infusions (cash) to vulnerable populations. This CLA approach was crucial to securing approval from the GOM. As a result of this collaborative design, GiveDirectly has adapted, for the first time, their global operational model to the local context with group cash transfers and will contribute to the technical evidence base of economic strengthening. USAID and GiveDirectly have already far exceeded initial goals of providing funding to 500 cooperatives. Understanding that women are the first and most impacted by shocks, 60 percent of program participants are women.