Conflict forced Hawa*, 60, to flee with nothing. Unconditional cash from Save the Children, through the ECHO-funded Somali Cash Consortium, carried her family through their hardest months in Qandala, Somalia.
For sixty years, Hawa* has run her own home and made her own decisions. In her village, she kept goats, ran a small shop stocked with the things her neighbours needed every day, and watched her husband set off to gather frankincense from the land around them, ready to sell at the market.
"My name is Hawa* We live, in Qandala district. I have always worked. We keep livestock goats, animals we raised ourselves. I also have a small shop where I sell things that people in the village need every day. My husband collects frankincense from the land around us and takes it to sell at the market. It is how we live. We work and we manage. The people around us are good people. The local authorities help when they can. We are not a rich family, but we take care of ourselves, and we take care of each other. Life is good here. This is our home and we know it well."
Then the military operations came, and that life ended in a moment.
"It happens fast and there is no time to think or to plan. We had no choice. We ran. We left everything behind; the animals, the shop, the house, everything we built. We took almost nothing with us."
The family travelled a long and hard road, walking far and carrying very little. They reached Qandala district, in Somalia's Bari region, in August 2024, exhausted and with nothing. They had chosen Qandala because it was the nearest place they knew. Familiarity, though, could not soften what they found.
"But when we arrived, the first problems we met was water — there was none — and no school for the children. Those were the first things we had to face, before anything else was even possible."
For seven months, the family managed alone.
"We arrived here in August 2024. Save the Children did not reach us until March 2025. Those months in between were very long and very hard. We were already here, already struggling, and we had to wait. When the support finally came, it was a relief. But those months before it we managed them alone."
The support came through the Somali Cash Consortium, funded by the European Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations (ECHO). As a key partner in the consortium, Save the Children provided multi-purpose cash assistance to 500 of the most vulnerable displaced households in Qandala district. Hawa's family received $130 a month for three months, $390 in total, sent directly to her mobile phone. No travel was needed to collect it, and no one else decided how it would be spent.
"When the money from Save the Children comes, it comes to my mobile phone. I am the one who manages it. Nobody tells me what to buy. I decide. I know what my family needs. I buy food first that is always the first thing. And then the small things we need at home, the things you cannot do without. That money helps us a lot. It gets us through the hardest weeks. I am grateful for it. But I also know it does not solve everything."
That control matters. Hawa has always managed her own household, and the assistance reached her in a way she could direct herself, food first, then the essentials her family could not do without. It also protected the family from harder choices. Without the cash, a household in their position may have been forced to skip meals, take on debt, or sell whatever productive assets remained, decisions that deepen a crisis long after it passes. Instead, the family met their basic needs with dignity during a period when they had no income and no other support.
Hawa is clear-eyed about what the cash could and could not fix. Her family still has no permanent shelter, no electricity, and no reliable water. The drought continues, and their land of origin remains unsafe to return to.
"The biggest problem we have today is shelter. We lost our home when we ran and we still have no proper place to live. But it is not only shelter. The place where we are now has no electricity. There is no water. The drought is still bad. And we have nowhere to return to our land is still not safe. We are still displaced. We are still in the middle of this. The suffering did not stop when the support came. It is still here, every day. I hope we will be given a place to live. I want my family to be safe."
What Hawa asks for is simple: a safe place for her family to live. The cash assistance carried them through the worst of the crisis, and it did so on her terms. Through the Somali Cash Consortium, Save the Children continues to deliver this kind of life-saving support to newly displaced families across Puntland and Hirshabelle, so that more families like Hawa's can meet their most urgent needs with dignity while they rebuild.
*Name changed to protect identity.
About the project
Through the Somali Cash Consortium (SCC), funded by the European Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations (ECHO) and the Swiss Development Cooperation (SDC), Save the Children provided multi-purpose cash assistance to 500 conflict-affected households in Qandala district, Bari region of Puntland, Somalia. Each household received $120 per month over three months, a total of $360 per family, through unconditional cash transfers designed to give families flexibility in meeting their most urgent needs. The consortium has been operational since January 2018, reaching approximately 50,000 households across Somalia each year.
Households are prioritised through a data-driven, vulnerability-based targeting process that assesses food security, displacement status, household composition, and protection risks, with particular focus on newly displaced families, those in hard-to-reach areas, female-headed households, and families with children at risk of acute malnutrition. Independent post-distribution monitoring in December 2025 found that 96 per cent of participating households were able to meet their essential food and non-food needs, with 78.9 per cent of total programme funding directed to participants. Somalia's humanitarian crisis remains severe: 4.8 million people are in need of assistance in 2026, driven by consecutive failed rainy seasons, conflict, and deepening funding shortfalls.
The SCC is led by Concern Worldwide and includes Save the Children International, the Norwegian Refugee Council, the Danish Refugee Council, ACTED, COOPI, and Action Against Hunger, alongside Somali national and local organisations.
