Addressing the increasing vulnerabilities of the communities affected by the Syria crisis in Mount Lebanon with Multipurpose Cash Assistance For displaced Syrian in Lebanon, the economic situation remains desperate. Overall, 70.5% of Syrians refugees live beneath the national poverty line and the 50% is unable to afford the survival minimum expenditure basket. This situation continued to worsen slightly in the last year, after a sharp deterioration between 2014 and 2015, due to the depletion of assets accompanying prolonged displacement, restricted access to income generation opportunities. Families face the incapacity to access adequate shelter and basic domestic items for their households including food, healthcare and education. Provision of Multi-Purpose Cash Assistance aims to prevent socio-economically vulnerable households, including female headed households, from falling deeper into poverty. SIF supported for the past years a total of 849 Syrian HH, 202 unique Lebanese and 12 Palestinian. The most severely and highly vulnerable families.
With the current Program funded by OCHA, (ending in April 2017) SIF assisted 484 HH. The aim of the project was to not discontinue SIF caseload during the winter, waiting the setup of the common red card (UNICEF, WFP, LCC and UNHCR). Starting from April 2017, SIF beneficiaries would have to be assisted by UNHCR or LCC. HOWEVER, at the end of March 2017 (last loading of the SIF/OCHA project), it is clear that the severely vulnerable caseload will not be transferred to UNHCR or LCC because they are still in lack of funds to take over of SIF caseload.
For this reason it is essential for SIF to continue the assistance of at least the 250 HH severely vulnerable until July 2017
The targeted beneficiaries are among the most vulnerable people affected by the Syrian crisis and have been identified through vulnerability criteria given by the end of 2016 by the Desk Formula. While the mildly, least and highly vulnerable of the current caseload will be discontinued, it is absolutely critical to continue the assistance to the 198 HH severely vulnerable. Part of those beneficiaries, have been assisted by SIF since May 2015 (51 HH through SIF funds), some others from the winterization 2015-16 (28 HH SIF funds) and others 119 have been assisted starting with the SIF /OCHA project 2016 and 59 HH starting January 2017.

This project is a continuation of the previous MCAPs phases, aiming to prevent Syrian families  sliding further down into a more profound vulnerability if discontinued from assistance while waiting to be included in the MCAP by the UNHCR. 
Both LCC and UNHCR are not sure to cover the 100% of severely vulnerable HH, even if UNHCR replaced around 1700 HH excluded recently because mild or least vulnerable with beneficiaries that have scored severely from referrals and in line from the ranking of the desk formula.
SIF wishes to include in this new project several families earlier identified through SIF hotline in the area of implementation of SIF child protection projects those families being in the past months referred as severely vulnerable to the cash actors in order to be included in the cash assistance but never assisted due to the lack of funds SIF will include at least those 52 HH scored as severely vulnerable and never assisted before with a MCAP.
The total of 250 HH will be targeted for an additional 4 months so as to receive assistance until the UNHCR or LCC actors are able to include them. This comes in line with the Basic Assistance sector, where UNHCR should cover all severely vulnerable HH in 2017. This project clearly highlights the importance of no discontinuity of support to beneficiaries and ensures a continuity of support until the transition to the Common Red Card currently being distributed by UN agencies and LCC. 
The last SIF loading was done at the end of March, the new project will start on 1st of May, covering 4 loadings (April, May, June and July) while PDM will be conducted in August 2017.