Early action
June 15, 2026
How Norwegian Refugee Council Somalia and three local implementing partners used Coala Pay's Oracle to settle pre-authorized sub-grants in 2 minutes when drought thresholds were met, reaching 2,955 people across Balcad, Xudur, and Luuq.
Funds accessible in under 24 hours
Implementing partner staff survey (n=8)
%
Agreed it cut the cost of assessing needs
All 8 implementing partner staff surveyed
Minutes to settle
From Oracle trigger to partner account
People reached
Across Balcad, Xudur, and Luuq within 3 months of trigger
$
Pre-authorized sub-grant
Per partner, signed months before the drought window
When drought conditions in Balcad, Xudur, and Luuq met the thresholds NRC Somalia and its local partners had agreed on, sub-grants settled to partner accounts in roughly 2 minutes. Under NRC's fastest existing emergency funding mechanism, the Crisis Modifier, the floor for the same funding to reach partner accounts is 8 days. The early action window for many slow-onset hazards is 24 to 72 hours.
Pre-authorized sub-grants, weather triggers, three local partners
NRC Somalia pre-authorized $6,270 sub-grants to each of three local implementing partners months ahead of the 2025 drought window. Coala Pay codified flood and drought conditions into self-executing smart contracts tied to NRC's self-custodial account. The Oracle, Coala Pay's data layer for trigger-based settlement, was configured to read the FAO's Somalia Water and Land Information Management (SWALIM) feed: Combined Drought Index, district-level rainfall, and river height at the Jowhar and Luuq stations. Thresholds were co-designed with NRC, the three local implementing partners, and weather data specialists.
To corroborate satellite data with field conditions, Coala Pay deployed Billy, the community engagement app in the Coala Pay ecosystem. Local Billy users in each project district answered recurring micro-surveys on shallow wells, pasture, livestock prices, household meal intake, and displacement. The Oracle triangulated those responses against SWALIM before any contract executed.
NRC retained custody of the funds throughout. The smart contract sat against NRC's self-custodial account. Settlement could only fire when the Oracle confirmed thresholds, and a flood and drought trigger could not fire redundantly for the same partner.
Between November 25 and December 10, 2025, drought thresholds hit for all three partners. Funds settled from NRC's account to partner accounts in roughly 2 minutes per disbursement. e-Dir, a vetted Somali off-ramp provider, converted USDC to Somali shillings in under 24 hours. Two of the three partners received their local-currency bank deposits within 30 minutes of off-ramp initiation. The third cleared within 24 hours after running into a Somali banking cut-off time.
2,955 people reached as funds settled in under 24 hours
PHF distributed 250 hygiene and dignity kits, 250 20-liter buckets, and 1,250 soap bars across Balcad. READO ran water trucking for 1,400 people in Xudur. SHRA delivered multipurpose cash assistance to 55 people in Luuq.
Across the three partners, 2,955 people received drought response within three months of the trigger firing.
Implementing partner staff (n=8) reported a fundamental shift. The biggest change was speed: under previous mechanisms, almost two-thirds had waited 15 to 30 days, and a quarter had waited more than a month.
• 7 of 8 strongly agreed the Oracle was faster than the funding mechanism they had used before.
• All 8 agreed it reduced the cost of assessing drought needs and requesting funding.
• 7 of 8 reported zero challenges with the system.
• All 8 reported it was clear when a transaction had succeeded.
Speed wasn't the only shift. Each step is recorded onchain: threshold confirmation, contract execution, partner account receipt, off-ramp confirmation. NRC and its upstream donors can audit and reconcile in real time. No personally identifiable information is exposed.
Institutional control moves upstream, settlement moves to minutes
NRC's institutional role moves earlier in the cycle. Partner selection, due diligence, budget approval, and threshold definition all sit upstream, months before any crisis, with the country office and upstream donor. The new component is the settlement layer that fires automatically when the conditions agreed upstream are met. For early action programmes where the decision logic is knowable in advance and human approval is the limiting factor on response time, that is a structural change.
The model could integrate into NRC's Rapid Response Mechanism and contingency planning, with pre-approved partner agreements and trigger-based disbursement conditions embedded in NRC's preparedness frameworks.
Two structural issues, both being addressed
Two structural issues surfaced and are now being addressed.
Data redundancy. The Oracle leaned heavily on SWALIM after the dissolution of USAID disrupted FEWSNET in early 2025 and removed a critical corroborating feed. SWALIM's CDI also carries an approximately 30-day reconciliation lag. The monthly evaluation epoch for drought was too coarse for a fast-moving 2025 drought cycle. The next configuration will use multiple corroborating sources, shorter evaluation windows for slow-onset hazards, and a fallback plan for the loss of any single provider. Billy already showed that community-level early warning indicators can serve as primary input alongside satellite-derived data.
Administrative runway. Setting up the first trigger-based disbursement system inside NRC required several months of legal, compliance, and procurement review across departments and time zones. Smart contracts have to be authorized and deployed before the Oracle can fire. For anticipatory action, that runway has to be factored in well before the forecasted emergency window.
One implementation gap was operational. One partner received funds during a holiday period and worked in a complex security environment. Funds were off-ramped immediately, and field activity began two months later. Settlement speed sits inside a broader operating reality in active conflict zones.
One measurement gap is worth flagging openly: beneficiary-outcome data was outside the project's scope. The survey captured implementing partner staff perspectives, not community perspectives on the response itself.
days
Crisis Modifier floor
NRC's fastest existing emergency funding mechanism
Local implementing partners
"The system reduces response time for crises that need immediate and timely response to save lives."
Implementing partner staff
NRC Somalia Early Action Pilot (anonymous survey response)
