No Lost Generation (Min Ila) Child-Focused Humanitarian Safety Net
No Lost Generation/Min Ila was Lebanon’s only child-focused social assistance programme for refugee families, reaching around 50,000 children over two years with regular, predictable social assistance. Through the provision of a regular cash transfer, household visits, and an integrated referral mechanism, families were supported to invest in their children themselves, demonstrating significant positive impacts. Improvements were recorded in areas including spending on children, food security, school enrollment and regular attendance, as well as optimism. When asked about the Min Ila program, more than 8 out of 10 beneficiaries stated that the assistance had a positive impact on their children including reducing child labor.
Lessons learned include:
- Proving the possibility and importance of carrying out an impact evaluation for a social assistance programme in a humanitarian context;
- The need to ensure when cash is provided that service supply keeps pace with demand; and
- The concept of holistic social assistance in humanitarian contexts is still less well understood than that of cash transfers, thereby jeopardizing the sustainability of funding for such programs.
