Strengthening Day Care Ecosystem to enhance Employment of young women especially teenage mothers in the informal settlements of Nairobi and Kisumu

01 Summary

Early childhood care and education is rapidly growing in Kenya with increasing attention to children's development at policy, programme and family levels. At global level, Nurturing Care Framework for Early Childhood Development has been developed to enhance growth in the sector. In Kenya, efforts have been made to streamline the sector with ECDE being a devolved function in the Constitution while County Governments license the service providers. Several organizations have also stepped in to further the agenda through capacity building, advocacy and research.

However, gaps still exist Access to day care services is a key component of women’s economic empowerment and advancement of gender equality. According to recent APHR study; “for women with young children, employment and involvement in income generating activities often depends on availability of affordable child care. This is particularly true for Kenyan mothers living in resource-limited urban areas, who may lack kin support for child care, and who rely on low-paying jobs in the informal sector.’’ Downtrodden young mothers are not able to improve their livelihoods, while social and technology innovations that can create more jobs for young women in the day care sector remain untapped

02 Strategy

Evidence gaps and data inaccessibility: There is gaps in targeted evidence focusing on under 35 year old women who have been trained on responsive care giving and ECCD, the numbers who went ahead to open their own centres. There are also challenges in accessing credible data from past researches.
Quality issues: Most of informal settlements services are home based and quality is not the best.
Less focus on under 4 year olds: Most organizations’ programmes target children over 4 years. CBC also takes care of over 4 years while those younger are not ready to be in school yet.
Less sustainable capacity building: most organizations in the sector offer one off trainings without focussed mentorship and coaching.

03 Key Actions

Research evidence on care economy: Generate evidence on quality, supply and affordability of day care ecosystem and its contribution to economy, gender equality and wellbeing of young mothers
Training and supporting of SMEs: SMEs in the care economy capacities enhanced so as to operate profitably according to standards that will be set by OAY from the research.
Digital platform fully operationalized with actual linkages: The project will supported demand creation for day care services and linkages to opportunities for enhanced wellbeing of young mothers and their children.

04 Impacts

New evidence generatedon quality, accessibility, supply and affordability of day care ecosystem and its contribution to economy, gender equality and wellbeing of young mothers 62.5% (20) of surveyed childcare facility owners were untrained on caregiving services. Only 9% (3) of the facilities surveyed reported being able to offer first aid services in case an accident occurred within their facilities.
78% (25) – were reported to be unregistered with three (3) of the childcare providers un-aware of the requirement
Design of Mentorship Guide and Training curriculums for Childcare: The curriculum covered topic such as, Responsible caregiving, Business Administration, Policy development, Nutrition, Financial managements and Quality standards among others.
Exposure to regulatory regimes: Care givers were trained to familiarize themselves with all policies regulating their business so that they can comply with the law. These can include; 1) ECD policy 2017. 2) Child Act 2022. 3) 2018 ECD regulations, AND, National ECD policy 2021.
Care giving as a decent form of work-The project supported the communities we worked in to begin caregiving as a form of decent work, particularly for young mothers. This empowered young women to view their home-based daycares as a business either for profit making. In the consultation process before writing the proposal most women did not view their home-based daycares as business, in fact there was one woman who took care of children as a favour and did not charge for it. This initiative has enabled women, in informal settlements, to formalize their daycare businesses and provided them with a stable source of income.
Strengthening Gender-Sensitive Policies- OAY has gained knowledge and expertise from this initiative, prompting organizational shifts towards a greater focus on advocating for gender- sensitive programs and policies

Strengthening Day Care Ecosystem to enhance Employment of young women especially teenage mothers in the informal settlements of Nairobi and Kisumu

Overview

01 Summary

02 Strategy

03 Key Actions

04 Impacts