This paper aims to promote learning emerging from the early policy response to the Covid-19 crisis on social protection crisis response effectiveness and on opportunities and risks for longer-term social protection strengthening. It centres on the experience of low- and middle-income countries and on measures taken in the initial phases of the crisis, between the declaration of the pandemic, in March 2020, and early 2021. Moreover, it focuses on measures explicitly aiming to extend or step up provision to four population groups particularly adversely affected by the crisis and commonly excluded from (or underserved by) social protection – informal workers, women, urban dwellers and refugees – and on two cross-cutting themes: operations and financing.