In 2019, Lebanon witnessed the start of one of the most severe socio-economic crises globally since the mid-nineteenth century, plunging many Lebanese into poverty.  

Amid the hardships, a new hope emerged in 2021. The World Bank set up a $246 million social safety net project and the Government of Lebanon (GoL) designed a registration platform for this program, with the help of Siren Associates, called DAEM (Arabic for "support"). Built in record time, DAEM is more than just a registry; it’s a fully localized social protection system that provides a lifeline to Lebanese families hit by crisis.

In this episode, we hear from the GoL, CGAP, the World Bank, and Siren Associates about how collaboration was key to DAEM’s success and how, even in the most challenging conditions, it’s possible to design solutions that go beyond emergency relief and sow the seeds for a more inclusive financial system.  

This is Season 2, Episode 6 of CGAP's podcast, Inclusive Finance Frontiers. 

Featured Voices
Ahmed Fatih Ortakaya, Senior Social Protection Specialist, World Bank
Carole Alsharabati, Research Director, SIREN Associates
Marie Louise Abou Jaoudeh, Presidency of the Council of Ministers (PCM) of the Government of Lebanon
Nadine Chehade, Senior Financial Sector Specialist, World Bank 
Souraya Sbeih, Consultant, CGAP 
Listen and subscribe for free on your favorite platform. To learn more, visit www.cgap.org. To share feedback, connect with us at podcast@cgap.org. 

 

This episode incorporates a news report from PBS NewsHour, Financial crisis leads some in Lebanon to rob banks to access their money.

Coding Through Crisis: Building a Digital Social Protection System in Lebanon

In this episode, we start a new building block of our social protection solar system with the first part of the topic on delivery and provision of social protection. We will be looking at the innovations in the delivery of services and cash grants, focusing on informal workers and on the role that informal workers organizations might have in improving access to these workers by facilitating the last mile delivery of services or benefits.

To open this block, we will turn to Africa and look into three cases of provision of child care services. First, we go to South Africa, to talk to Richard Dobson about the pop-up child care facility in the Warwick Junction market, in Durban. Richard is an architect and co-founder of the NGO Asiye eTafuleni. Next, we move to Accra, in Ghana, to talk to Dorcas Ansah, WIEGO’s Accra Focal city coordinator. We discussed the guidelines for implementing child care facilities in the Ghanaian capital markets and the plans for expanding the initiative.

We finish our tour in Rwanda, where the market vendors association SITRIECY is also implementing child care facilities in the Kigali markets. We talked to SITRIECY’s secretary-general and StreetNet International treasurer Jeanette Nyiramassengesho. She explained their approach to combine provision of child care for informal workers’ children in markets with the creation of a community savings group.

***
Learn more

- WIEGO: Child Care in Markets: An E-Book https://www.wiego.org/research-library-publications/child-care-in-markets/ 
 - Working in Warwick: Including Street Traders in Urban Plans
https://www.wiego.org/research-library-publications/working-warwick-including-street-traders-urban-plans/
- WIEGO - Child Care in Markets project: https://www.wiego.org/project/child-care-markets/ 
- Guidelines and Standards for Day-Care Centres in and around Markets in Ghana, by Susan Sabaa, Dela Quarshie-Twum  https://www.wiego.org/advocacy-worker-education-resources/guidelines-and-standards-day-care-centres-and-around-markets-ghana/
- Webinar: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wn9niHLL8vI 
- About Asiye eTafuleni https://aet.org.za/about-asiye-etafuleni/our-story/


#43 Workers-led Delivery of Child Care in Markets

Round up of news on poverty from around the world by host Dr Keetie Roelen. 

From reports on child poverty to a call for submission for monologues on homelessness - listen now.

For list of links to all items in this episode, head over to poverty-unpacked.org

45. Poverty Unpacked - May chat

In this episode we take a pause from the discussion around delivery and provision of social protection benefits and take a fresh look at the challenges to finance social protection in a time of very deep transformations in the world of work. Among these changes, we have increasing automation, swift advances in artificial intelligence and the emergence of forms of capital-labour relations through the mediation of platforms.

These multiple processes have triggered an intense discussion about how social protection systems should be or could be financed – and by whom. It was within this ongoing debate that Luca Pelerano and Florian Juergens-Grant have recently published an op-ed at Project Syndicate. In this article, they analysed some of these challenges and, most importantly, advanced some possible innovative alternatives to address them. Luca and Florian will be our guests in this special episode.

Luca Pelerano is a social protection specialist and works at the Social Protection Department of the International Labour Organization (ILO) and he has more than 15 years of experience in policy reform. Florian is the Global Social Protection Advisor at WIEGO, and his work focuses mainly on the issues regarding the financing of social protection for informal workers, the impacts of social protection programmes on labour markets, workers and their families; as well as the design of inclusive social insurance systems.

***

Learn more
Future-Proofing Social Protection, by Luca Pelerano and Florian Juergens-Grant - https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/how-to-ensure-sustainable-financing-social-insurance-by-florian-juergens-grant-and-luca-pellerano-2025-03s


#44 Towards a social insurance levy on capital

With only five years to go before the goal of ending extreme child poverty, we are off track to achieve this. But there are valuable lessons from countries that have made significant progress to accelerate efforts.

In this episode, we discuss what works to reduce child poverty with members of the Global Coalition to End Child Poverty.

Find out more on poverty-unpacked.org. 

46. What works to reduce child poverty – Global Coalition to End Child Poverty

Time for another Poverty Unpacked chat!

This month features research on poverty in new housing areas in UK and the role of coloniality in social protection policy in Africa. Plus celebrating six months since publication of The Empathy Fix book!

Check out all the links and more on https://poverty-unpacked.org

47. Poverty Unpacked - July chat

In this episode, we resume the building block of our social protection solar system on the topic of delivery and provision of social protection. In this second episode of the series, we will turn to India, to understand how informal workers organizations can play an important role to improve access to their members by facilitating the last mile delivery of services or benefits.
 
The Self-Employed Women’s Association, SEWA, set up in India their so-called Shakti Kendras, or SSKs.  I talked to Susan Thomas, the National Coordinator of Health and Childcare programmes at the Lok Swas-thya SEWA Trust (LSST), to learn more about this worker-led initiative.
Susan explained how the Shakti Kendras operates, how they help informal workers to access social protection in India, how digital tools are being integrated in their work, as well as the next steps of the Shakti Kendras.

***

Learn more:

-BLOG: Bridges to Better Lives: SEWA’s Community Health Workers (October 05, 2019), by Annie Devenish, Laura Alfers https://www.wiego.org/blog/bridges-better-lives-sewas-community-health-workers/

-We are the bridge’: an implementation research study of SEWA Shakti Kendras to improve community engagement in publicly funded health insurance in Gujarat, India (2022), by Susan Thomas, Sharmada Sivaram, Zubin Shroff, Ajay Mahal, Sapna Desai https://gh.bmj.com/content/7/Suppl_6/e008888 

-BLOG: In India, One-stop Shops Increase Access to Healthcare, Nutrition and Social Security Services for Working Poor (May 15, 2017), by Laura Alfers https://www.wiego.org/blog/india-one-stop-shops-increase-access-healthcare-nutrition-and-social-security-services-working/ 


*Our theme music is Focus from AA Aalto (Creative Commons)

#45 Workers-led delivery of Healthcare and Social Protection

Time for another Poverty Unpacked chat!

This month features new child poverty estimates, pressure on parents due to focus on early childhood, mismatch between policy makers' attitudes and evidence, and EU Anti-Poverty Strategy PLUS what's on in October in the month of the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty.

Check out all the links and more on poverty-unpacked.org

49. Poverty Unpacked - September chat

Policy Seminar | IFPRI Policy Seminar
Informing Crisis Response in Sudan
Co-organized by IFPRI and the CGIAR Science Program on Food Frontiers and Security | Part of the Fragility to Stability Seminar Series
October 22, 2025

The recent resurgence of armed conflicts in Africa is increasing the need and urgency for investments in shock-responsive humanitarian and social assistance programs. Armed conflicts both increase the need for aid and greatly complicate delivery of humanitarian services to vulnerable populations. In addition, humanitarian organizations are facing an increasing funding gap because of dwindling donor aid.

These challenges are forcing humanitarian organizations to revisit the effectiveness and cost-efficacy of their programs and services for conflict-affected populations. The choice and relative efficacy of alternative modalities and delivery of humanitarian or social assistance programs in these communities remains an active area of debate.

The armed conflict in Sudan, which erupted in April 2023, has created the world’s largest displacement crisis, and has left over 30 million of the 47.5 million Sudanese population needing multifaceted humanitarian assistance. To help inform the crisis response, this policy seminar will bring together researchers, practitioners, and humanitarian organizations working in Sudan to share and discuss recent evidence on preferences and impact of alternative modalities to deliver humanitarian aid amid armed conflict.

Introduction and Opening Remarks
Johan Swinnen, Director General, IFPRI
Laurent Bukera, Country Director and Representative, UN World Food Programme (WFP), Sudan

Highlights From Recent Findings
Khalid Siddig, Senior Research Fellow and Leader of the Sudan Program, IFPRI
Kibrom Abay, Senior Research Fellow, IFPRI
Gabrielle Fox, Chief of Party, Cash Consortium of Sudan (CCS)

Panel Discussion
Alex De Waal, Executive Director, World Peace Foundation, Tufts University
Samantha Chattaraj, ‏Emergency Coordinator, UN World Food Programme (WFP), Sudan
Lena Mahgoub, Convener of the Sudan Social Protection Alliance (SSPA), Former Federal Minister of Labor and Social Development and Co-Founder of Impact Hub Khartoum

Closing Remarks
Katrina Kosec, Senior Research Fellow, IFPRI

Moderator
Hala Abushama, Research Analyst, IFPRI

More about this Event: https://www.ifpri.org/event/informing-crisis-response-in-sudan/

Subscribe IFPRI Insights newsletter and event announcements at www.ifpri.org/content/newsletter-subscription

Informing Crisis Response in Sudan

In this episode, we conclude the building block of delivery and provision of social protection from our social protection solar system. After discussing the role of informal workers’ organizations in the delivery of childcare and healthcare, in this third and final episode of the series, we will talk about the role of informal workers organizations in the delivery of social security benefit for workers in the informal economy. 

In Costa Rica, an innovative approach to social security has been implemented over the years by the national government to include rural workers and, more recently, informal urban workers. In this policy, grassroots workers’ organizations play a key role not only in the last mile delivery, but in several stages of the delivery chain. To learn more how Collective Social Insurance Agreements work in Costa Rica, their challenges and potential for expansion and replication, I talked to Fabio Durán.

Fabio is an economist and served as Head of the Public Finance, Actuarial and Statistics Unit at ILO’s Social Protection Department in Geneva, and has just retired as the ILO’s senior specialist in Social Protection and Economic Development for Central America and Mexico, in their office in Costa Rica.


Learn more:

*ILO Social Protection in Action Brief (2022). “Costa Rica: Extending mandatory contributory coverage to self-employed workers” https://www.social-protection.org/gimi/Media.action;jsessionid=f0DRZHXKIdUdf6eojX2c2lHKIAjQ_ly9Vx3-0XTMVPqdPICPNIgp!1393577045?id=19457#:~:text=These%20agreements%20are%20signed%20by,and%20medium%2D%20scale%20farmers%CA%BC%20organizations

*ILO Report (2013) – “Innovations in extending social insurance  coverage to independent workers” https://www.social-protection.org/gimi/gess/gess/RessourcePDF.action?ressource.ressourceId=42119 


#46 Expanding social security delivery to informal workers

The International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) provides research-based policy solutions to sustainably reduce poverty and end hunger and malnutrition in developing countries. Established in 1975, IFPRI currently has more than 600 employees working in over 50 countries. It is a research center of CGIAR, a worldwide partnership engaged in agricultural research for development.

Globally, 2 billion people work in the informal economy. This means that 61% of workers rely on work that offers little pay and few protections. Women informal workers, such as domestic workers, home-based workers, street vendors and waste pickers are at the base of the economic pyramid with the highest risk of poverty.  Public policies and social protection schemes often do not consider these  workers, leaving them vulnerable to income losses and struggling to cope after an event or shock. In this monthly podcast we will discuss some of the most pressing issues related to social protection from the perspective of informal workers, including debates around the future of work, demographic changes and the informal economy, as well as  social services, like child care and health that can protect informal workers’ incomes. Subscribe to the “Informal Economy Podcast: Social Protection” to learn more about WIEGO’s cutting-edge research and hear from informal workers organisations about the debates, policies, successes and challenges they face in accessing and reforming social protection systems.

In conversation with others, we explore how poverty affects the mind, relationships, emotions and society as a whole, and what can be done to change it. Hear from activists, researchers, policy makers, and those with lived experience of poverty around the world.

New tracks tagged #Social Protection