The 41^st manual and 15^th electronic-payment cycle of the Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty (LEAP) Programme, comes off from 29^th March to 8th April, 2016.  

A total of one hundred and forty-six thousand, one hundred and nineteen (146,119) beneficiary households in 185 districts are expected to be paid their LEAP grant.

 During the payment period; one eligible household member will receive Gh¢ 64.00, two eligible member household will receive Gh¢ 76.00, while three eligible member household will receive Gh¢88.00 and four or more eligible member household will receive Gh¢106.00. 

These payments cover the months of January and February, 2016.

LEAP is a Social Protection intervention, which was introduced by the Government of Ghana to support the vulnerable and extremely poor households to meet their basic needs for survival.  The LEAP Programme is making some significant impact in the lives of its target group - the extremely poor, vulnerable and excluded in society.

The LEAP Programme is currently transitioning from the manual payment to electronic-payment platform.  In line with the transition, the Ghana Interbank Payment and Settlement System (GhIPSS) has been contracted by the MoGCSP to roll out the Electronic-Payment system of cash grant transfer to all LEAP beneficiaries. 

A nation-wide electronic-payment exercise is currently being conducted to enroll all LEAP beneficiaries onto the E-Zwich platform so that they can receive their social cash grant through this platform.  Beneficiaries who have been enrolled onto this platform will be paid their cash grant electronically during this LEAP payment cycle and this will continue into 42^nd payment cycle in May, 2016 and beyond.

Officials of the Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection as well as the Department of Social Welfare will monitor these payments during the period.

Complementary interventions have been introduced into the implementation of the LEAP Programme.  One of such innovative interventions is the linkage with the Japan Social Development Fund (JSDF) project. The JSDF project being implemented under the Ghana Social Opportunity Project (GSOP) seeks to provide livelihood support through skills training in soap making, kente and basket weaving among other skills, to LEAP beneficiary household members who have the capacity to work. The JSDF complementary service linkage with the LEAP Programme is being implemented in selected districts of the Upper East Region.

LEAP beneficiary households are also linked to the Labour Intensive Public Work (LIPW) Project under the Ghana Social Opportunity Project (GSOP). Under this initiative, able-bodied members in LEAP households are targeted for labour intensive works in construction activities in their communities where they earn additional income to boost their household income.

It is also important to note that the LEAP Programme has been under-going reforms, which are aimed at building efficient and effective systems to serve as the platform to scale up productive inclusive complementary services across all LEAP households. Some of the reforms include upgrading of Management Information System, transitioning from manual targeting to electronic-targeting of LEAP beneficiaries and implementation of a robust Monitoring and Evaluation framework, which was developed in collaboration with the Oxford Policy Management (OPM) - UK.

All these innovations are to ensure that the LEAP Programme is built on solid and sustainable systems that will be able to stand the times and make it a model cash transfer programme in Africa.