Together We Stand

[ 144 ] Through the financial support of WFP and the technical support of Halk Bank, YTL50 are uploaded to Kizilaykarts each month, per person living in a Syrian household. So, for example, a family of five individuals receives YTL250 for each month through the card allocated for their family. The amount uploaded to cards can only be used through point-of-sale machines earmarked for contracted markets, and only for the purchase of food supplies. Certain prohib- ited food items — alcohol, tobacco, chocolate, sweets, biscuits, ice cream and soda — cannot be bought or sold. Kizilaykart only works in the terminals of the shops contracted by TRC and the Government; this allows for oversight and monitoring, ensuring that sufficient quan- tities of various nutritious and fresh food products are available for purchase by households at competitive market prices. In order to do so, the TRC and WFP teams work together to perform periodic market audits. If they notice any sort of abuse — whether it concerns the prices or the quality of products — they issue a report, which can result in the termination of the contract of the related market. TRC Kizilaykart teams perform regular household visits to do beneficiary selection according to two major stand- ards. The first criterion to benefit from the programme is to be registered by the Ministry of Interior Directorate General of Migration Management (DGMM), which is actually the key requirement to benefit from all sorts of services provided by the Government of Turkey for the Syrian people living in the country. The second criterion is to meet the necessary ‘vulnerability criteria’, deter- mined mutually by WFP and TRC in order to ensure the programme reaches the most vulnerable. The vulnerability criteria are: • Female-headed households • Widow-headed household • Elderly-headed households • Child-headed households • Households with one or more person with chronic illness or disability that excludes work opportunity. Image: TRC A periodic audit at a market by TRC and WFP staff Kizilaykart gives beneficiaries access to varied, nutritious food that they can purchase when and how they wish to T ogether W e S tand