Cash assistance gets families the help they need

Afghanistan | 2024 | CBPF

Afghanistan, Kabul. Gulpari*, 35, lives with her brother, Amingul* and their extended family in a modest home in Kabul’s Bagrami district. Originally from Aryoub Zazi in Paktia Province, Gulpari’s life took a tragic turn 16 years ago when a rocket struck her home, altering her future forever.

“I was young and engaged, sitting at home when a rocket hit my home, injuring me in the back,” she recalls. “Since then, my leg has been paralyzed. Doctors say I can recover with proper treatment, but we cannot afford it.”

Her brother, Amingul, is a cobbler and the sole provider for their family of 14, including three other brothers who suffer from neurological disorders. Providing for such a large family has always been a challenge, but recent hardships have made survival even more difficult.

“I haven’t been able to work for the past few days because my fingers were badly cut and torn, making it impossible to work,” Amingul explained. “Now, they are slowly healing, but I lost crucial days of income.”

Their family is among the 1,000 households that received Multi-Purpose Cash Assistance (MPCA) from ActionAid, supported by the Afghanistan Humanitarian Fund (AHF) – a Country-based Pooled Fund managed by OCHA.

The AHF serves as a critical financial lifeline for local and international NGOs, enabling people-centered and localized humanitarian action.

For Amingul, this assistance arrived at a crucial moment. “When we received this aid, I was deeply in debt, we had no food at home. I used some of the money to pay off debts and buy food for the family and medicine for my sister,” he explains.

Gulpari added, “Your help revived me, like bringing the dead back to life. Every time I recite the Holy Quran, I pray for you all because, in very difficult times, you took our hand. But we are still in desperate need of more support, as we are experiencing multiple hardships.”

ActionAid’s MPCA project provides immediate financial relief for particularly vulnerable households, including internally displaced persons, returnees, those with disabilities and those headed by women; helping them with essentials like food, shelter, clothing and healthcare. Offering flexible cash support, where households can individually prioritize what matters most to them at that time, the project has reached about 1,000 households with US $156 per month for three months, equivalent to national subsistence data.

For families like Amingul and Gulpari, this support offers a temporary reprieve, but without sustained aid, their struggles will persist. The need for long-term humanitarian assistance in Afghanistan remains urgent, as thousands continue to face economic hardship, displacement and health crises.

*Names have been changed.

For more information: visit the Afghanistan Humanitarian Fund web site, and for real-time contribution and allocation data go to the Pooled Funds Data Hub.

Pooled Fund impact stories