United Nations Radio

"This is the first of its kind in the world. It's a food voucher which will use the sym cards of mobile phones. Refugees will receive US $22 worth of voucher every two months and this will enable them to go to local shops and redeem that money for food items, including food that they can't normally get in normal distributions."

Duration: 00:00:23

"It's a pilot project for 1,000 refugees right now. At the moment the World Food Programme is providing food assistance to 130,000 Iraqi refugees in Syria. And so, if it bears fruit, so to speak, it will potentially be continued. The advantage of this very much -- and we have done this in other locations with paper food vouchers is that it permits, as I say, people to buy food, also when they need it as opposed to having to queue in long lines and go to distribution centres. They can go to the shop when they actually need the food and collect it at that time.

Duration: 00:00:35

"And it also is better for the economies of the communities in which we are able to use food vouchers because, in essence we are not giving food away, but we are actually providing an additional market to the local shop keepers."

Duration: 00:00:13

"Actually for the 130,000 refugees whom we are providing food assistance to right now in Syria, and these are people who have been there since about 2006, interestingly, all of them have mobile phones. We are currently providing news about distributions on mobile phone messages to the 130,000 case load right now. And so what we are doing is doing a pilot to actually give the voucher via mobile phones using sym cards donated by the local mobile phone provider. As you might realize, people this in situation are not maybe your typical food aid recipient in the sense that they have come to Syria in 2006, many with their life savings. They've come also with some of their own possessions including their mobile phones. They have now, many of them used up their life savings and really do need food assistance. But they happen to have phones and this is the way we can deliver a service to them."

Duration: 00:00:59

"They will receive on the sym card that's been donated a code, sort of as if you are getting a mobile phone message and the code will appear on their phone. They go to the shops that are participating in this programme and they will purchase any kind of food that is needed by them, chick peas, oil, caned fish, eggs, even milk. And then it is detracted from the amount that they have on their credit. They then get a new message after they have done that purchase with the remaining balance."

Duration: 00:00:36