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Proposed by: Rasmus Heltberg, the World Bank
Best way and times to contact during RHoK 2.0 Dec 4/5 2010:
Many people and organizations wish to donate to disaster victims but hold back because they worry about misappropriation of funds by relief organizations and governments. Alternatively, donors channel their giving into low value in-kind donations such as food, clothes, and building materials. Compared to cash and near-cash transfers (such as vouchers), in-kind assistance, particularly if low value and bulky, is often inefficient, has high logistics costs, and clogs up critical infrastructure such as ports and airports.
The challenge is to create a tool for email receipt confirmation to the donor of cash and high value in-kind transfers. It might work somewhat similar to the email confirmation receipt one gets when shipping packages by courier or when donating for microcredit on kivi.org. However, the tool would embody added layers of security in the form of some combination of the recipient’s cell phone number; geo-coordinates; biometrics (iris or fingerprint); signature; and photo.
Donors receive an email that donated funds have been received by person X with cell phone number Y on date Z; while not entirely fraud-proof, such a system would permit donors to perform random spot checks, greatly increasing the chance of any fraud being detected and increasing donors’ confidence to donate.
The donor ‘adopts’ a set number of households in disaster affected village A. The donor sends the sum of money required to provide a predetermined level of cash transfers to these households for a predetermined period. The donor receives an email confirmation with a set combination of cellphone number, geo-coordinates, biometrics, signature, and photo (the combination might vary depending on what is more practical in any given circumstance) every time a cash transfer is made to any of the covered households. Cash transfers can be made in any number of tranches and at any frequency (weekly, monthly, just once, etc): each time the donor receives confirmation.
The system would work in the same way for near-cash transfers such as health insurance premia or food coupons and for high-value in-kind transfers.
The money tracker http://wiki.rhok.org/The_money_tracker/_where_did_my_money_go